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MEMOIRS 

OF THE LIFE 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. 



J.^'*^; LOCK HART, ESQ. 



VOLUME L 



ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH: 

HOUIiSTON & STONEMAN, LONDON. 



MIXX^LVIU. 



mXSTLX BTS,SXT» IBZHBVaOB. 




TO 

JOHN BACON SAWREY MORRITT, 

OF ROKEBY PARK, ESQ.' . 

THESE MEMOIRS OF HIS FRIEND 

ARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY 
INSCRIBED. 



^ 



PREFACE. 



London, December 20, 1836. 

In obedience to the instructions of Sir Walter 
Scott's last will, I had made some progress in 
a narrative of his personal history, before there 
was discovered, in an old cabinet at Abbotsford, 
an autobiographical fragment, composed by him 
in 1808 — shortly after the publication of his 
Marmion. 

This fortunate accident rendered it necessary 
that I should altogether remodel the work which 
I had commenced. The first Chapter of the 
following Memoirs consists of the Ashestiel 
fragment; which gives a clear outline of his 
early life down to the period of his call to the 
bar — July 1792. All the notes appended to 



TREFACE. 



this Chapter are also by himself. They are in 
a handwriting very diflferent from the text, and 
seem, from various circumstances, to have been 
added in 1826. 

It appeared to me, however, that the author's 
modesty had prevented him from telling the 
story of his youth with that ftilness of detail 
which would now satisfy the public. I have 
therefore recast my own collections as to the 
period in question, and presented the substance 
of them, in five succeeding chapters, as illus-^ 
trations of his too brief autobiography. This 
procedure has been attended with many obvious 
disadvantages; but I greatly preferred it to print- 
ing the precious fragment in an Appendix. 

I foresee that some readers may be. apt to 
accuse me of trenching upon delicacy in certain 
details of the sixth and seventh chapters in this 
volume. Though the circumstances there treated 
of had no trivial influence on Sir Walter Scott's 



PREFACE. 



history and character, I should have been in- 
clined, for many reasons, to omit them ; but the 
choice was, in fact, not left to me, — for they 
had been mentioned, and misrepresented, in 
various preceding sketches of the Life which 1 
had undertaken to illustrate. Such being the 
case, I considered it as my duty to tell the story 
truly and intelligibly ; but I trust I have avoided 
unnecessary disclosures ; and, after all, there was 
nothing to disclose that could have attached 
blame to any of the parties concerned. 

For the copious materials which the friends 
of Sir Walter have placed at my disposal, I feel 
just gratitude. Several of them are named in the 
course of the present volume ; but I must take 
this opportunity of expressing my sense of the 
deep obligations under which I have been laid 
by the frank communications, in particular, of 
William Clerk, Esq., of Eldin, — John Irving, 
Esq., W. S., — Sir Adam Ferguson, — James 
Skene, Esq., of Rubislaw, — Patrick Murray, 



FBEFACE. 



Esq., of Simprim, — J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., of 
Rokeby, — WUliam Wordsworth, Esq., — Ro- 
bert Southey, Esq., Poet Laureate, — Samuel 
Rogers, Esq., — William Stewart Rose, Esq., 

— Sir Alexander Wood, — the Right Hon. the 
Lord Chief Commissioner Adam — the Right 
Hon. Sir William Rae, Bart., — the late Right 
Hon. Sir William Knighton, Bart., — the Right 
Hon. J. W. Croker, — Lord Jeflrey, — Sir 
Henry Halford, Bart., G. C. H., — the late 
Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G. C.B., — 
Sir Francis Chantrey, R. A., — Sir David 
Wilkie, R. A., — Thomas Thomson, Esq., 
P. C. S., — Charles Kirkpatfick Sharpe, Esq., 
— -'William Scott, of Raebum, Esq., — John 
Scott, of Gala, Esq., — Alexander Pringle, of 
Whytbank, Esq., M.P., — John Swinton, of 
Inverleith-place, Esq., — John Richardson, Esq., 
of Fludyer Street, — John Murray, Esq., of 
Albemarle Street, — Robert Bruce, Esq., She- 
riff of Argyle, — Robert Ferguson, Esq., M.D., 

— G. P. R. James, Esq., — William Laidlaw, 



PBEFACE. XI 

Esq., — Robert Cadell, Esq., — John Elliot 
Shortreed, Esq., — Allan Cunningham, Esq., 
— Claud Russell, Esq., — James Clarkson, Esq., 
of Melrose, — the late James Ballantyne, Esq., 
— Joseph Train, Esq., — Adolphus Ross, Esq., 
M. D., — William Allan, Esq., R. A., — Charles 
Dumergue, Esq., — Stephen Nicholson Barber, 
Esq., — James Slade, Esq., — Mrs Joanna 
Baillie, — Mrs George Ellis, — Mrs Thomas 
Scott, — Mrs Charles Carpenter, — Miss Rus- 
sell of Ashestiel, — Mrs Sarah Nicholson, — 
Mrs. Duncan, Mertoun-Manse, — the Right 
Hon. the Lady Polwarth, and her sons, Henry, 
Master of Polwarth, the Hon. and Rev. Wil- 
liam, and the Hon. Francis Scott. 

I beg leave to acknowledge with equal thank- 
fulness the courtesy of the Rev. Dr Harwood, 
Thomas White, Esq., Mrs Thomson, and the 
Rev. Richard Gamett, all of Lichfield, and the 
Rev. Thomas Henry White, of Glasgow, in 
forwarding to me Sir Walter Scott's early letters 



XU FBEFACE. 

to Miss Seward : that of the Lord Seaford, in 
intrusting me with those addressed to his late 
cousin, George Ellis, Esq. : and the kind rea- 
diness with which whatever papers in their pos- 
session could be serviceable to my undertaking 
were supplied by the Duke and Duchess of 
Buccleuch, and the Lord Montagu; — the 
Duchess-Countess of Sutherland, and the Lord 
Francis Egerton ; — the Lord Viscount Sid- 
mouth, — the Lord Bishop of LlandaiF, — the 
Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart., — ^the Lady 
Louisa Stuart, — the Hon. Mrs Warrender, and 
the Hon. Catharine Arden, — Lady Davy, — 
Miss Edgeworth, — Mrs Maclean Clephane, of 
Torloisk, — Mrs Hughes, of Uflfoigton, — Mrs 
Terry, (now Richardson,) — Mrs Bartley, — 
Sir George Mackenzie of Coul, Bart., — the 
late Sir Francis Freeling, Bart., •— Captain Sir 
Hugh Pigott, R. N., — the late Sir William 
Gell, — Sir Cuthbert Sharp, — the Very Rev. 
Principal Baird, — the Rev. WilKam Steven, 
of Rotterdam, — the late Rev. James Mitchell, 



PREFACE. 



of Wooler, — Robert William Hay, Esq., lately 
Under Secretary of State for the Colonial De- 
partment, — John Borthwick, of Crookstone, 
Esq., — John Cay, Esq., SheriJBF of LinKthgow, 
— Captain^ Basil Hall, R.N., — Thomas Crofton 
Croker, Esq., — Edward Cheney, Esq., — Alex- 
ander Yomig, Esq., of Harbum, — A. J. Valpy, 
Esq., — James Maidment, Esq., Advocate, — 
the late Donald Gregory, Esq., — Robert John- 
ston, Esq., of Edinburgh,* — J. J. Masquerier, 
Esq., of Brighton, — Owen Rees, Esq., of Pa- 
ternoster Row,t — William Miller, Esq., formerly 
of Albemarle Street, — David Laing, Esq., of 
Edinburgh, — and John Smith the Youngest, 
Esq., of Glasgow. 

J. G. LOCKHART. 



* Bailie Johnston died 4th April 1838, in his 73d 
year. 

t Mr Rees retired from the house of Longman & Co. 
at Midsummer 1837, and died 5th September following, 
in his 67th year. 



CONTENTS 

OF VOLUME FIRST. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
MZMOIK OF THX EABLT LiFI OF SlK WaLTXK ScOTT, 

WRITTXN BT HOCSZLF, 1 

CHAPTER IL 

Illustratioxis of the Autobiograpliical Fragment •— Edinburgh 
— iSandy-Knowe— Bath ^Prestonpans 1771-1778, 65 

CHAPTER IIL 

Illustrations of the Autobiography continued — High School 
oiEdinburgh — Residence at Kelso 177&-178S, 124 

CHAPTER IV. 
Illustrations of the Autobiography continued •—> Anecdotes 
ol Scott*8 CoUege Life 1783-1786, 136 

CHAPTER V. 

Illufitrations continued— Scott*s Apprenticeship to his Father 
— Excursions to the Highlands, &e. •« Debating Societies 
— Early Correspondence, &c. &c 1786-1790, 179 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PAOH 

Illustrations continued <— Studies for the Bar — • Excursion 
to Northumberland — Letter on Flodden Field — Call to 
the Bar 1790-1792, 225 

CHAPTER VII. 

First Expedition into Liddesdale — Study of German — Po- 
litical Trials, &c Specimen of Law Papers — Burger's 

Lenore translated — Disappointment in Love, 1792-1796, 254 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Publication of Ballads after Burger — Scott Quarter-Master 
of the Edinburgh Light-Horse — Excursion to Cumber- 
land — Gilsland Wells — Miss Carpenter — Marriage — 

1796-1797, 337 



MEMOIKS 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



CHAPTER L 



MEMOIR 

OF THE EARLY LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, 

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 

Ashestiely April 26^ 1808. 
The present age has discovered a desire, or 
rather a rage, for literary anecdote and private 
liistory, that may be well permitted to alarm one 
who has engaged in a certain degree the atten- 
tion of the pubKc. That I have had more than 
my own share of popularity, my contemporaries 
will be as ready to admit, as I am to confess 
that its measure has exceeded not only my hopes, 
but my merits, and even wishes. I may be there- 

VOL. I. A 



2 LIFE OF SIE WALTEB SCOTT. 

fore pennitted, without an extraordinary degree 
of vanity, to take the precaution of recording a 
few leading circumstances (they do not merit the 
name of events) of a very quiet and uniform life 
— that, should my literary reputation survive 
my temporal existence, the public may know 
from good authority all that they are entitled to 
know of an individual who has contributed to 
their amusement. 

From the lives of some poets a most impor- 
tant moral lesson may doubtless be derived, and 
few sermons can be read with so much profit 
as the Memoirs of Burns, of Chatterton, or of 
Savage. Were I conscious of any thing peculiar 
in my own moral character which could render 
such developement necessary or useful, I would 
as readily consent to it as I would bequeath my 
body to dissection, if the operation could tend to 
point out the nature and the means of curing 
any peculiar malady. But as my habits of think- 
ing and acting, as well as my rank in society, 
were fixed long before I had attained, or even 
pretended to, any poetical reputation,* and as it 

* I do not mean to say that my success in Hterature has 
not led me to mix familiarly in society much above mj 
birth and original pretensions, since I have been readily 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 3 

produced, when acquired, no remarkable change 
upon either, it is hardly to be expected that much 
information can be derived from minutely inves- 
tigating frailties, follies, or vices, not very dif- 
ferent in number or degree from those of other 
men in my situation. As I have not been blessed 
with the talents of Bums or Chatterton, I have 
been happily exempted from the influence of 
their violent passions, exasperated by the strug- 
gle of feelings which rose up s^ainst the unjust 
decrees of fortune. Yet, although I cannot tell 
of difficulties vanquished, and distance of rank 
annihilated by the strength of genius, those who 

received in the first circles in Britain. But there is a 
certain intuitive knowledge of the world, to which most 
well-educated Scotchmen are early trained, that prevents 
them from being much dazzled by this species of ele- 
vation. A man who to good nature adds the general 
rudiments of good breeding, provided he rest contented 
with a simple and unaffected manner of behaving and 
expressing himself, wiU never be ridiculous in the best 
society, and so far as his talents and information permit^ 
may be an agreeable part of the company* I have 
therefore never felt much elevated, nor did I experience 
any violent change in situation, by the passport which 
my poetical character afforded me into higher company 
than my birth warranted. — [1826.] 



4 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

shall hereafter read this little Memoir may find 
in it some hints to be improved, for the regula- 
tion of their own minds, or the training those of 
others. 

Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a 
national prerogative as unalienable as his pride 
and his poverty. My birth was neither dis- 
tinguished nor sordid. According to the pre- 
judices of my country, it was esteemed gentle^ 
as I was connected, though remotely, with an- 
cient femilies both by my father's and mother's 
side. My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, 
well known in Teviotdale by the surname of 
Beardie, He was the second son of Walter 
Scott, first Laird of Raebum, who was third 
son of Sir William Scott, and the grandson of 
Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition ^t^/c? 
Watt^ of Harden. I am therefore lineally de- 
scended fi*om that ancient chiefbin, whose name 
I have made to ring in many a ditty, and firom 
his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow — no bad 
genealogy for a Border minstrel. Beardie^ my 
great-grandfather aforesaid, derived his cogno- 
men firom a venerable beard, which he wore un- 
blemished by razor or scissors, in token of his 
regret for the banished dynasty of Stewart. It 



AUTOBIOGHAPHT. 



would have been well that his zeal had stopped 
there. But he took arms, and intrigued in their 
cause, until he lost all he had in the world, 
and, as I have heard, run a narrow risk of being 
hanged, had it not been. for the interference of 
Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth. 
Beardie's elder brother, William Scott of Rae* 
burn, my great-granduncle, was kiUed about 
the age of twenty-one, in a duel with Pringle 
of Crichton, grandfather of the present Mark 
Pringle of Clifton. They fought with swords, 
as- was the fashion of the time, in a field near 
Selkirk, called from the catastrophe the Rae- 
burn Meadotc^pot. Pringle fled from Scot- 
land to Spain, and was long a captive and slave 
in Barbary. Beardie became, of course. Tutor 
ofRaeburn^ as the old Scottish phrase called 
him — that is, guardian to his in&nt nephew, 
father of the present Walter Scott of Raeburn. 
He also managed the estates of Makerstoun, 
being nearly related to that family by his mo- 
ther, Isobel MacDougal. I suppose he had 
some allowance for his care in either case, and 
subsisted upon that and the fortune which he had 
by his wife, a Miss Campbell of Silvercraigs, 
in the west, through which connexion my fa- 



O LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

ther used to call cousin^ as they say, with the 
Campbells of Blythswood. Beardie was a man 
of some learning, and a friend of Dr Pitcaim, 
to whom his politics probably made him accept- 
able. They had a Tory or Jacobite club in 
Edinburgh, in which the conversation is said to 
have been maintained in Latin. Old Beardie 
died in a house, still standing, at the north-east 
entrance to the Churchyard of Kelso, about 
.... [November 3, 1729.] 

He left three sons. The eldest, Walter, had 
a family, of which any that now remain have 
been long settled in America : — the male heirs 
are long since extinct. The third was William, 
father of James Scott, well known in India as 
one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales's 
island : — he had, besides, a numerous family 
both of sons and daughters, and died at Lass- 
wade, in Mid-Lothian, about .... 

The second, Robert Scott, was my grandfather. 
He was originally bred to the sea ; but, being 
shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial voyage, 
he took such a sincere dislike to that element, 
that he could not be persuaded to a second at- 
tempt. This occasioned a quarrel between him 
and his father, who left him to shift for himself* 



AUTOBIOG&AFHr. 7 

Robert was one of those active spirits to whom 
this was no misfortune. He turned Whig upon 
the spot, and fairly abjured his father's politics, 
and his learned poverty. His chief and relative, 
Mr Scott of Harden, gave him a lease of the 
farm of Sandy-Knowe, comprehending the rocks 
in the centre of which Smailholm or Sandy- 
Knowe Tower is situated. He took for his shep- 
herd an old man called Hogg, who willingly 
lent him, out of respect to his family, his whole 
savings, about £30, to stock the new farm. 
With this sum, which it seems was at the time 
sufficient for the purpose, the master and servant 
set oflF to purchase a stock of sheep at Whitsun- 
Tryste, a fair held on a hill near Wooler in 
Northimiberland. The old shepherd went care- 
fully from drove to drove, till he found a hirsel 
likely to answer their purpose, and then re- 
turned to tell his master to come up and conclude 
the bargain. But what was his surprise to see 
him galloping a mettled hunter about the race- 
course, and to find he had expended the whole 
stock in this extraordinary purchase ! — Moses's 
bargain of green spectacles did not strike more 
dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield's family than 
my grandfeither's rashness into the poor old shep- 
herd. The thing, however, was irretrievable. 



8 LIFE OF 8IK WALTER SCOTT. 

and they returned without the sheep. In tlie 
course of a few days, however, my grand&ther, 
who was one of the best horsemen of his time, 
attended John Scott of Harden's hounds on this 
same horse, and displayed him to such advan- 
tage that he sold him for double the original 
price. The fexm was now stocked in earnest ; 
and the rest of my grandfather's career was that 
of successful industry. He was one of the first 
who were active in the cattle trade, afterwards 
carried to such extent between the Highlands of 
Scotland and the leading counties in England, 
and by his droving transactions acquired a con- 
siderable sum of money. He was a man of 
middle stature, extremely active, quick, keen, 
and fiery in his temper, stubbornly honest, and 
so distinguished for his skill in country matters, 
that he was the general referee in all points of 
dispute which occurred in the neighbourhood. 
His birth being admitted as gentUy gave him 
access to the best society in the county, and his 
dexterity in country sports, particularly hunting, 
made him an acceptable companion in the field 
as well as at the table.* 

• The present Lord Haddington, and other gentle- 
men conversant with the south country, remember my 



AUTOBIOGBAFHr. 9 

Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, married, in 
1728, Barbara Haliburton, daughter of Thomas 
Haliburton of Newmains, an ancient and re- 
spectable &mily in Berwickshire. Among other 
patrimonial possessions, they enjoyed the part 
of Dryburgh, now the property of the Earl of 
Buchan, comprehending the rums of the Abbey. 
My granduncle, Robert Haliburton, having no 
male heirs, this estate, as well as the represen- 
tation of the family, would have devolved upon 
my father, and indeed Old Newmains had set- 
tled it upon him ; but this was prevented by 
the misfortunes of my granduncle, a weak silly 
man, who engaged in trade, for which he had 
neither stock nor talents, and became bankrupt. 
The ancient patrimony was sold for a trifle 
(about £3000), and my father, who might have 
purchased it with ease, was dissuaded by my 
grandfather, who at that time believed a more 
advantageous purchase might have been made 
of some lands which Raebum thought of selling. 
And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgk^. 
although my father s maternal inheritance, but 
the right of stretching our bones where mine 

grandfather well. He was a fine alert figure, and wore 
a jockey cap 'over his gi^ey hair. — [1826]. 



10 LIFE OF SIK WALTER SCOTT. 

may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own 
glances over these pages. 

Walter Scott, my father, was born in 1729, 
and educated to the profession of a Writer to 
the Signet. He was the eldest of a large family, 
several of whom I shall have occasion to mention 
with a tribute of sincere gratitude. My father 
was a singular instance of a man rising to emi- 
nence in a profession for which nature had in 
some degree unfitted him. He had indeed a turn 
for labour, and a pleasure in analyzing the ab- 
truse feudal doctrines connected with convey- 
ancing, which would probably have rendered him 
unrivalled in the line of a special pleader, had 
there been such a profession in Scotland; but in 
the actual business of the profession which he 
embraced, in that sharp and intuitive perception 
which is necessary in driving bargains for him- 
self and others, in availing himself of the wants, 
necessities, caprices, and follies of some, and 
guarding against the knavery and malice of 
others, Uncle Toby himself could not have con- 
ducted himself with more simplicity than my 
father. Most attorneys have been suspected, 
more or less justly, of making their own fortune 
at the expense of their clients — my father's fate 



AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 1 1 

was to vindicate his calling from the stain in one 
instance, for in many cases his clients contrived 
to ease him of considerable smns. Many wor- 
shipful and be-knighted names occm* to my me- 
mory, who did him the honour to run in his debt 
to the amount of thousands, and to pay him with 
a lawsuit, or a commission of bankruptcy, as the 
case happened. But they are gone to a different 
accounting, and it would be ungenerous to visit 
their disgrace upon their descendants. My father 
was wont also to give openings, to those who 
were pleased to take them, to pick a quarrel with 
him. He had a zeal for his clients which was 
almost ludicrous: far from coldly discharging 
the duties of his employment towards them, he 
thought for them, felt for their honour as for his 
own, and rather risked disobliging them than 
neglecting anything to which he conceived their 
duty bound them. If there was an old mother 
or aunt to be maintained, he was, I am afraid, 
too apt to administer to their necessities from 
what the young heir had destined exclusively to 
his pleasures. This ready discharge of obliga- 
tions which the Civilians tell us are only natural 
and not legal, did not, I fear, recommend him 
to his employers. Yet his practice was, at one 



12 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

period of his life, very extensive. He understood 
his business theoretically, and was early intro- 
duced to it by a partnership with George Chal- 
mers, Writer to the Signet, under whom he had 
served his apprenticeship. 

His person and face were uncommonly hand- 
some, with an expression of sweetness of temper, 
which was not fallacious ; his manners were ra- 
ther formal, but full of genuine kindness, espe- 
cially when exercising the duties of hospitality. 
His general habits were not only temperate, but 
severely abstemious; but upon a festival occa- 
sion, there were few whom a moderate glass of 
wine exhilarated to such a lively degree. His 
religion, in which he was devoutly sincere, was 
Calvinism of the strictest kind, and his favourite 
study related to church history. I suspect the 
good old man was often engaged with Knox and 
Spottiswoode's folios, when, immured in his so- 
litary room, he was supposed to be immersed in 
professional researches. In his political principles 
he was a steady fnend to freedom, with a bias, 
however, to the monarchical part of our consti- 
tution, which he considered as peculiarly exposed 
to danger dmrmg the later years of his life. He 
had much of ancient Scottish prgudice respect- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1 3 

ing the forms of marriages, funerals, christenings, 
and so forth, and was always vexed at any ne- 
glect of etiquette upon such occasions. As his 
education had not been upon an enlarged plan, 
it could not be expected that he should be an en- 
lightened scholar, but he had not passed through 
a busy life without observation; and his remarks 
upon times and manners often exhibited strong 
traits of practical though untaught philosophy. 
Let me conclude this sketch, which I am un- 
< conscious of having overcharged, with a few 
.lines written by the late Mrs Cockbum* upon 
the subject. They made one among a set of 
poetical characters which were given as toasts 
among a few friends, and we must hold them to 
contedn a striking likeness, since the original was 
recognised so soon as they were read aloud: — 

" To a thing that's uncommon — 
A youth of discretion, 
Who, though vastly handsome^ 
Despises flirtation: 



• Mrs Cockhurn (bom Miss Rutherford of Faimalie) 
was the authoi:ess of the beautiful song — 
" I have seen the smiling 

Of fortune beguiling." — [1826]. 



14 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

To the friend in affliction, 
The heart of affection, 
Who may hear the last trump 
Without dread of detection.'* 

In [April 1758] my father married Anne 
Rutherford, eldest daughter of Dr John Ruther- 
ford, professor of medicine in the University of 
Edinburgh. He was one of those pupils of Boer- 
haave, to whom the school of medicine in our 
orthem metropolis owes its rise, and a man dis- 
tinguished for professional talent, for lively wit, 
and for literary acquirements. Dr Rutherford 
was twice married. His first wife, of whom my 
mother is the sole surviving child, was a daughter 
of Sir John Swinton of Swinton, a family which 
produced many distinguished warriors during the 
middle ages, and which, for antiquity and ho- 
nourable alliances, may rank with any in Britain. 
My grandfather's second wife was Miss Mackay> 
by whom he had a second family, of whom are 
now (1808) alive, Dr Daniel Rutherford, pro- 
fessor of botany in the University of Edinburgh, 
and Misses Janet and Christian Rutherford, ami- 
able and accomplished women. 

My father and mother had a very numerous 
family, no fewer, I believe, than twelve children. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 15 

of whom many were highly promising, though 
only five survived very early youth. My eldest 
brother (that is, the eldest whom I remember 
to have seen) was Robert Scott, so called after 
my uncle, of whom I shall have much to say 
hereafter. He was bred in the King's service, 
under Admiral, then Captain William Dickson, 
and was in most of Rodney's battles. His tem- 
per was bold and haughty, and to me was often 
checkered with what I felt to be capricious 
t)nranny. In other respects I loved him much, 
for he had a strong turn for literature, read 
poetry with taste and judgment, and composed 
verses himself, which had gained him great 
applause among his messmates. Witness the 
following elegy upon the supposed loss of the 
vessel, composed the night before Rodney's cele- 
brated battle of April .the 12th, 1782. It alludes 
to the various amusements of his mess: — 

^^ No more the geese shall cackle on the poop, 

No more the bagpipe through the orlop sounds 
No more the midshipmen, a jovial group. 

Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round. 
In death^s dark road at anchor fast they stay, 

Till Heaven's loud signal shall in thunder roar ; 
Then starting up, all hands shall quick obey, 

Sheet home the topsail, and with speed unmoor**' 



1 



16 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Robert sung agreeably — (a virtue which was 
never seen in me) — understood the meehanieai 
arts, and when in good humour, could regale us 
with many a tale of bold adventure and narrow 
escapes. When in bad humour, however, he gave 
us a practical taste of what was then man-of- 
war's discipline, and kicked and cuffed without 
mercy. I have often thought how he might have 
distinguished himself had he continued in the 
navy until the present times, so glorious for nau- 
tical exploit. But the peace of Paris [Versailles, 
1783] cut off all hopes of promotion for those 
who had not great interest; and some disgust 
which his proud spirit had taken at harsh usage 
from a superior officer, combined to throw poor 
Robert into the East-India Company's service, 
for which his habits were ill adapted. He made 
two voyages to the East, and died a victim to 

the climate in 

John Scott, my second brother, is about three 
years older than me. He addicted himself to the 
military service, and is now brevet-major in the 
73d regiment.* 

* He was this year made major of the second battalion, 
by the kind intercession of Mr Canning at the War- 



AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 17 

I haid an only sister, Anne Scott, who seemed 
to be from her cradle the butt for mischance to 
shoot arrows at. Her childhood was marked by 
perilous escapes from the most extraordinary 
acddents. Among others, I remember an iron- 
railed door leading into the area in the centre of 
George's Square being closed by the wind, while 
her fingers were betwixt the hasp and staple. 
Her hand was thus locked in, and must have 
been smashed to pieces, had not the bones of her 
fingers been remarkably slight and thin. As it 
was, the hand was cruelly mangled. On another 
occasion she was nearly drowned in a pond, or 
old quarry-hole, in what was then called Brown's 
Park, on the south side of the square. But the 
most unfortunate accident, and which, though it 
happened while she was only six years old, proved 
the remote cause of her death, was her cap ac- 
-cidentally taking fire. The child was alone in the 
room, and before assistance could be obtained, 
her head was dreadfully scorched. After a lin- 
gering and dangerous illness, she recovered — 
but never to enjoy perfect health. The slightest 

Office — 1809. He retired from the army, and kept 
house with my mother. His health was totally broken, 

and he died, yet a young man, on 8th May, 1816 

[1826.] 

VOL. I. B 



18 lilFE OF 8IE WALTER SCOTT. 

cold occasioned swellings in her face, and other 
indications of a delicate constitution. At length, 
in [1801], poor Anne was taken ill, and died 
after a very short interval. Her temper, like that 
of her brothers, was peculiar, and in her, per- 
haps, it showed more odd, from the habits of in- 
dulgence which her nervous illnesses had formed. 
But she was at heart an affectionate and kind 
girl, neither void of talent nor of feeling, though 
living in an ideal world which she had framed to 
herself by the force of imagination. Anne was 
my junior by about a year. 

A year lower in the list was my brother 
Thomas Scott, who is still alive.* 

Last, and most unfortimate of our family, was 
my youngest brother Daniel. With the same 

* Poor Tom, a man of infinite humour and excellent 
parts, pursued for some time my father's profession ; but 
he was imfortunate, from engaging in speculations re- 
spe6ting farms and matters out of the line of his proper 
business. He afterwards became paymaster of the 70th 
regiment, and died in Canada. Tom married Elizabeth, 
a daughter of the family of M'Culloch of Ardwell, an. 
ancient Galwegian stock, by whom he left a son, Walter 
Scott, now second lieutenant of engineers in the East^ 
India Company's service, Bombay — and three daughters, 
Jessie, married to Lieutenant- Colonel Huxley ; 2. Anne ;. 
3. Eliza — the two last still unmsCtried. — [1826.] 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 19 

aversion to labour, or rather, I should say, the 
same detennined indolence that marked us alU 
he had neither the viyaeity of intellect which 
supplies the want of diligence, nor the pride 
which renders the most detested labour better 
than dependence or contempt. His career was 
as unfortunate as might be augured from such 
an unhappy combination, and after various un-« 
successful attempts to establish himself in life, 
he died on his return from the West Indies, in 
[July 1806.] 

Having premised so much of my family, I re-n 
turn to my own story. I was bom, as I believe, 
on the 15th August 1771, in a house belonging 
to my father, at the head of the College Wynd.. 
It was pulled down, with others, to make room 
for the northern front of the new College. I was 
an uncommonly healthy child, but had nearly 
died in consequence of my first nurse being ill 
of a consumption, a circumstance which she 
chose to conceal, though to do so was murder 
to both herself and me. She went privately to 
consult Dr. Black, the celebrated professor of 
chemistry, who put my father on his guard. 
The woman was dismissed, and I was consigned 
to a healthy peasant, who is still alive to boast 



20 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of her laddie being what she calls a grand gen- 
tleman* I showed every sign of health and 
strength until I was about eighteen months old. 
One night, I have been often told, I showed 
great reluctance to be caught and put to bed, 
and after being chased about the room, was ap- 
prehended and consigned to my dormitory with 
some difficulty. It was the last time I was to 
show such personal agility. In the morning I 
was discovered to be affected with the fever which 
often accompanies the cutting of large teeth. It 
held me three days* On the fourth, when they 
went to bathe me as usual, they discovered that 
I had lost the power of my right leg. My grand- 
father, an excellent anatomist as well as physician, 
the late worthy Alexander Wood, and many 
others of the most respectable of the faculty, 
were consulted. There appeared to be no dis- 
location or sprain; blisters and other topical 
remedies were applied in vain. When the efforts 
of regular physicians had been exhausted, with-* 
out the slightest success, my anxious parents, 
during the course of many years, eagerly grasped 
at every prospect of cure which was held out by 

* She died in 1810 [1826.] 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 21 

the promise of empirics, or of ancient ladies or 
gentlemen who conceived themselves entitled to 
recommend various remedies, some of which 
were of a nature sufficiently singular. But the 
advice of my grandfather, Dr Rutherford, thai 
I should be sent to reside in the country, to 
give the chance of natural exertion, excited by 
free air and liberty, was first resorted to, and 
before I have the recollection of the slightest 
event, I was, agreeably to this fiiendly counsel, 
an inmate in the £au*m-house of Sandy-Knowe. 

An odd incident is worth recording* It seems 
my mother had sent a maid to take charge of 
me, that I might be no inconvenience in the 
family. But the damsel sent on that important 
mission had left her heart behind her, in the 
keeping of some wild fellow, it is likely, who 
had done and said more to her than he was like 
to make good. She became extremely desirous 
to return to Edinburgh, and as my mother made 
a point of her remaining where she was, she con- 
tracted a sort of hatred at poor me, as the cause 
of her being detained at Sandy-Knowe. This 
rose, I suppose, to a sort of delirious affection, 
for she confessed to old Alison Wilson, the house- 
keeper, that she had carried me up to the Craigs, 



22 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

meaning, under a strong temptation of the Devil, 
to cut my throat with her scissors, and bury me 
in the moss. Alison instantly took possession 
of my person, and took care that her confidant 
should not be subject to any farther temptation, 
so far as I was concerned. She was dismissed, 
of course, and I have heard became afterwards 
a lunatic. 

It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence 
of my paternal grandfather, ahready mentioned, 
that I have the first consciousness of existence ; 
and I recollect distinctly that my situation and 
appearance were a little whimsical. Among the 
odd remedies recurred to to aid my lameness, 
some one had recommended that so ofiten as a 
sheep was killed for the use of the family, I 
should be stripped, and swathed up in the skin, 
warm as it was flayed firom the carcase of the 
animal. In this Tartar-like habiliment I well 
remember lying upon the floor of the little par- 
lour in the farm-house, while my grandfather, a 
venerable old man with white hair, used every 
excitement to make me try to crawl. I also 
distinctly remember the late Sir George Mao- 
Dougal of Makerstoun, father of the present Sir 
Henry Hay MacDougal, joining in this kindly 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 23 

attempt. He was, God knows how,* a relation 
of ours, and I still recollect him in his old- 
fashioned military habit (he had been colonel 
of the Greys), with a small cocked hat, deeply 
laced, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a 
light-coloured coat, with milk-white locks tied 
in a military fashion, kneeling on the ground be- 
fore me, and dragging his watch along the carpet 
to induce me to follow it. The benevolent old 
soldier and the infant wrapped in his sheepskin 
would have afforded an odd group to uninterested 
spectators. This must have happened about my 
third year, for Sir George MacDougal and my 
grandfather both died shortly after that period. 

My grandmother continued for some years to 
take charge of the farm, assisted by my father's 
second brother, Mr Thomas Scott, who resided 

* He was a second cousin of my grandfather*8. Isobel 
MacDongal, wife of Walter, the first Laird of Raebum, 
and mother of Walter Scott, called Beardie, was grand 
aunt, I take it, to the late Sir George MacDongal. There 
was always great friendship between us and the Maker- 
5toun fiunily. It singularly happened, that at the burial of 
the late Sir Henry MacDougal, my cousin William Scott 
younger of Raeburn, and I myself were the iiearest blood- 
relations present, although our connexion was of so old 
a date, and ranked as pall-bearers accordingly. — [1826.] 



24 LIFE OF SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

> 

at Crailing, as factor or land-steward for Mr 
Scott of Danesfield, then proprietor of that es- 
tate.* This was during the heat of the American 
war, and I remember being as anxious on my 
uncle's weekly visits (for we heard news at no 
^ther time) to hear of the defeat of Washington, 
as if I had had some deep and personal cause of 
antipathy to him. I know not how this was com« 
bined with a very strong prejudice in favour of 
the Stuart family, which I had originally imbibed 
from the songs and tales of the Jacobites. This 
latter political propensity was deeply confirmed 
by the stories told in my hearing of the cruelties 
exercised in the executions at Carlisle, and in 
the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden. One 
or two of our own distant relations had &llen 
on that occasion, and I remember of detesting 
the name of Cumberland with more than infant 
hatred. Mr Curie, farmer at Yetbyre, husband 

* My uncle afterwards resided at Elliston, and tHen 
took from Mr Cornelius Elliot the estate of V/oollee. 
Finally he retired to Monklaw, in the neighbourhood of 
Jedburgh, where he died, 1823, at the advanced age of 
ninety years, and in full possession of his faculties. It 
was a fine thing to hear him talk over the change of the 
country which he had witnessed. — [1826.] 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25 

of one of my aunts, had been present at their 
execution ; and it was probably from him that I 
first heard these tragic tales which made so great 
an impression on me. The local information, 
which I conceive had some share in forming my 
future taste and pursuits, I derived from the old 
songs and tales which then formed the amuse- 
ment of a retired country family. My grand- 
mother, in whose youth the old Border depre- 
dations were matter of recent tradition, used to 
tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight 
Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Tellfer of the fair 
Dodhead, and other heroes — merrymen all of 
the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood and 
Little John. A more recent hero, but not of 
less note, was the celebrated Diel of Littledean^ 
whom she well remembered, as he had married 
her mother's sister. Of this extraordinary 
person I learned many a story, grave and gay, 
comic and warlike. Two or three old books 
which lay in the window-seat were explored 
for my amusement in the tedious winter-days. 
Automathes, and Ramsay's Tea-table Miscel- 
lany, were my favourites, although at a later 
period an odd volume of Josephus's Wars of the 
Jews divided my partiality. 



26 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet 
Scott, whose memory will ever be dear to me, 
used to read these works to me with admirable 
patience, until I could repeat long passages by 
heart. The ballad of Hardyknute I was early 
master of, to the great annoyance of almost our 
only visiter, the worthy clergyman of the pa- 
rish, Dr Duncan, who had not patience to have 
a sober chat interrupted by my shouting forth 
this ditty. Methinks I now see his tall thin 
emaciated figure, his legs cased in clasped gam- 
badoes, and his face of a length that would 
have rivalled the Knight of La Mancha's, and 
hear him exclaiming, " One may as well speak 
in the mouth of a cannon as where that child 
is." With this little acidity, which was natural 
to him, he was a most excellent and benevolent 
man, a gentleman in every feeling, and alto- 
gether different from those of his order who 
cringe at the tables of the gentry, or domineer 
and riot at those of the yeomanry. In his youth 
he had been chaplain in the family of Lord 
Marchmont — had seen Pope — and could talk 
familiarly of many characters who had survived 
the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Though va- 
letudinary, he lived to be nearly ninety, and to 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27 

welcdme to Scotland his son, Colonel William 
Duncan, who, with the highest character for 
military and civil merit, had made a consider- 
able fortune in India. In [1795], a few days 
before his death, I paid him a visit, to enquire 
after his health. I found him emaciated to the 
last degree, wrapped in a tartan night-gown, 
and employed with all the activity of health and 
youth in correcting a history of the Revolution, 
which he intended should be given to the public 
when he was no more. He read me several pas- 
sages with a voice naturally strong, and which 
the feelings of an author then raised above the 
depression of age and declining health. I begged 
him to spare this fettigue, which could not but 
injure his health. His answer was remarkable. 
" I know," he said, " that I cannot survive a 
fortnight — and what signifies an exertion that 
can at worst only accelerate my death a few 
days ?" I marvelled at the composure of this 
reply, for his appearance suflSciently vouched 
the truth of his prophecy, and rode home to 
my uncle's (then my abode), musing what there 
could be in the spirit of authorship that could 
inspire its votaries with the courage of martyrs. 
He died within less than the period he assigned' 
— with which event I close my digression. 



28 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I was in my fourth year when my father was 
advised that the Bath waters might be of some 
advantage to my lameness. My affectionate aunt, 
although such a journey promised to a person 
of her retired habits any thing but pleasure or 
amusement, imdertook as readily to accompany 
me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had ex- 
pected all the delight that ever the prospect of 
a watering-place held out to its most impatient 
visitants. My health was by this time a good 
deal confirmed by the country air, and the in- 
fluence of that imperceptible and unjGsitiguing 
exercise to which the good sense of my grand- 
father had subjected me ; for when the day was 
fine, I was usually carried out and laid down be- 
side the old shepherd, among the crags or rocks 
round which he fed his sheep. The impatience 
of a child soon inclined me to struggle with my 
infirmity, and I began by degrees to stand, to 
walk, and to run. Although the limb affected 
was much shrunk and contracted, my general 
health, which was of more importance, was much 
strengthened by being firequently in the open air, 
and, in a word, I who in a city had probably 
been condemned to hopeless and helpless decre- 
pitude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and. 



AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 29 

my lameness apart, a sturdy child — non sine 
diis animosus infant 

We went to London by sea, and it may gra- 
tify the curiosity of minute biographers to learn, 
that our voyage was performed in the Duchess 
of Buccleuch, Captain Beatson, master. At 
London we made a short stay, and saw some 
of the common shows exhibited to strangers. 
When, twenty-five years afiterwards, I visited 
the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, 
I was astonished to find how accurate my recol- 
lections of these celebrated places of visitation 
proved to be, and I have ever since trusted 
more implicitly to my juvenile reminiscences. 
At Bath, where I lived about a year, I went 
through all the usual discipline of the pump- 
room and baths, but I believe without the least 
advantage to my lameness. During my resi- 
dence at Bath, I acquired the rudiments of 
reading at a day-school, kept by an old dame 
near our lodgings, and I had never a more 
regular teacher, although I think I did not 
attend her a quarter of a year. An occasional 
lesson firom my aunt supplied the rest. After- 
wards, when grown a big boy, I had a few les- 
sons from Mr Stalker of Edinburgh, and finally 



30 LIFE OF SIR WA.LTER SCOTT. 

from the Rev. Mr Cleeve. But I never ac- 
quired a just pronunciation, nor could I read 
with much propriety. 

In other respects my residence at Bath is 
marked by very pleasing recollections. The 
venerable John Home, author of Douglas, was 
then at the watering-place, and paid much at- 
tention to my aunt and to me. His wife, who 
has survived him, was then an invalid, and used 
to take the air in her carriage on the Downs,, 
when I was often invited to accompany her. 
But the most delightful recollections of Bath 
are dated after the arrival of my uncle, Captain 
Robert Scott, who introduced me to all the 
Uttle amusements which suited my age, and^ 
above all, to the theatre. The play was As 
You Like It ; and the witchery of the wholS 
scene is alive in my mind at this moment. I 
made, I believe, noise more than enough, and 
remember being so much scandalized at the 
quarrel between Orlando and his brother in the 
first scene, that I screamed out, " A'n't they 
brothers?" A few weeks' residence at home 
convinced me, who had till then been an only 
child in . the house of my grand&ither, that a 
quarrel between brothers was a very natural 
event. 



AOTOBIOGRAPHT. 31 

The other circumstances I recollect of my 
residence in Bath are but trifling, yet 1 never 
recall them without a feeling of pleasure. The 
beauties of the parade (which of them 1 know 
not), with the river Avon winding around it, 
and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite 
hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only 
rivalled by the splendours of a toy-shop s(Hne- 
where near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, 
I know not by what means, a kind of super- 
stitious terror for statuary of all kinds. No 
ancient Iconoclast or modem Calvinist could 
have looked on the outside of the Abbey ehurch 
(if I mistake not, the principal church at Bath 
is so called) with more horror than the image 
of Jacob's Ladder, with all its angels, presented 
to my infant eye. My uncle eflfectually com* 
bated my terrors, and formally introduced me 
to a statue of Neptune, which perhaps still 
keeps guard at the side of the Avon, where a 
pleasure boat crosses to Spring Gardens. 

After being a year at Bath, I returned first 
to Edinburgh, and afterwards for a season to 
Sandy-Knowe ; — and thus the time whiled 
away till about my eighth year, when it was 



32 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

thought sea-bathing might be of service to my 
lameness. 

For this purpose, still under my aunt's pro- 
tection, I remained some weeks at Prestonpans, 
a circumstance not worth mentioning, excepting 
to record my juvenile intimacy with an old 
military veteran, Dalgetty by name, who had 
pitched his tent in that little village, after all 
his campaigns subsisting upon an ensign's half- 
pay, though called by courtesy a Captain. As 
this old gentleman, who had been in all the 
German wars, found very few to listen to his 
tales of military feats, he formed a sort of al- 
liance with me, and I used invariably to attend 
him for the pleasure of hearing those communi- 
cations. Sometimes our conversation turned on 
the American war, which was then raging. It 
was about the time of Burgoyne's unfortunate 
expedition, to which my Captain and I augured 
different conclusions. Somebody had showed 
me a map of North America, and, struck with 
the rugged appearance of the country, and the 
quantity of lakes, I expressed some doubts on 
the subject of the General's arriving safely at 
the end of his journey, which were very indig- 
nantly refuted by the Captain. The news of 



AUTOBIOGBAFHY. 33 

the Saratoga disaster, while it gave me a little 
triumph) rather shook my intimacy with the 
veteran.* 

* Besides this veteran, I found another ally at Pres- 
tonpans, in the person of George Constable, an old 
friend of my father's, educated to the law, but retired 
upon his independent property, and generally residing 
near Dundee. He had many of those peculiarities of 
temper which long afterwards I tried to develope in the 
character of Jonathan Oldbuck. It is very odd, that 
though I am unconscious of any thing in which I strictly 
copied the mixMwri of my old friend, the resemblance 
was nevertheless detected by George Chahners, Esq., 
solicitor, London, an old friend, both of my father and 
Mr Constable, and who affirmed to my late friend, 
Lord Kinedder, that I must needs be the author of The 
Antiquary, since he recognised the portrait of George 
Constable. But my friend George was not so decided 
an enemy to womankind as his representative Monkbarns. 
On the contrary, I rather suspect that he had a tefidresse 
for my Aunt Jenny, who even then was a most beautiful 
woman, though somewhat advanced in life. To the 
diose of her life, she had the finest eyes and teeth I ever 
saw, and thoi^h she co^d be sufficiently sharp when 
she had a mind, her general behaviour was genteel and 
ladylike. However this might be, I derived a great 
deal of curious information from George Constable, both 
at this early period, and afterwards. He was constantly 
philandering about my aunt, and of course very kind to 

VOL. I. C 



34 LIFE OF SIE WALTEE SCOTT. 

From Prestonpans I was transported back to 
my father's house in George's Square, which 

me. He was the first person who told me ahout Falstaff 
and Hotspur, and other characters in Shakspeare. 
What idea I annexed to them I know not, but I must 
have annexed some, for I remember quite well being 
interested on the subject. Indeed, I rather suspect that 
children derive impulses of a powerful and important 
kind in hearing things which they cannot entirely com- 
prehend ; and therefore, that to write down to children's 
understanding is a mistake : set them on the scent, and 
let them puzzle it out. To return to George Constable, 
I knew him well at a much later period. He used always 
to dine at my father's house of a Sunday, and was au- 
thorized to tiurn the conversation out of the austere and 
Calvinistic tone, which it usually maintained on that 
day, upon subjects of history or auld langsyne. He re- 
membered the forty-five, and told many excellent stories, 
all with a strong dash of a peculiar caustic humour. 

Oeorge*s sworn ally as a brother antiquary was John 
Davidson, then Keeper of the Signet ; and I remember 
his flattering and compelling me to go to dine there. A 
writer's apprentice with the Keeper of the Signet, whose 
least officer kept us in order 1 — It was an awful event. 
Thither, however, I went with some secret expeictation 
of a scantling of good claret. Mr D. had a son whose 
taste inclined him to the army, to which his father, who 
had designed him for the bar, gave a most unwilling 
consent. He was at this time a young officer, and he 



AUTOBIOOBAPHr. 35 

continued to be my most established place of 
residence, until my marriage in 1797. I felt 
the change from being a single indulged brat, 
to becoming a member of a large family, very 
severely; for under the gentle government of 
my kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, 
and of my aunt, who, though of an higher 
temper, was exceedingly attached to me, I had 
acquired a degree of licence which could not 
be permitted in a large family. I had sense 
enough, however, to bend my temper to my 
new circumstances; but such was the agony 
which I internally experienced, that I have 

and I, leaving the two seniors to proceed in their chat 
as they pleased, never once opened our mouths either to 
them or each other. The Pragmatic Sanction happened 
unfortmiately to become the theme of their conversation, 
when Constable said in jest, '* Now, John, Fll wad you 
a plack that neither of these two lads ever heard of the 
. Pragmatic Sanction." — " Not heard of the Pragmatic 
Sanction!" said John Davidson; ^^ I would like to see 
that ;" and with a voice of thunder, he asked his son 
the fatal question. As young D. modestly allowed he 
knew nothing about it, his father drove him from the 
table in a rage, and I absconded during the confusion ; 
nor could Constable ever bring me back again to his 
friend Davidson's — [1826.] 



36 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

guarded against nothing more in the education 
of my own family, than against their acquiring 
habits of self-willed caprice and domination. I 
found much consolation during this period of 
mortification, in the partiality of my mother. 
She joined to a light and happy temper of mind 
a strong turn to study poetry and works of 
imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her 
religion was, as became her sex, of a cast less 
austere than my father^s. Still, the discipline 
of the Presbyterian Sabbath was severely strict, 
and I think injudiciously so. Although Bun- 
yan's Pilgrim, Gesner's Death of Abel, Rowe's 
Letters, and one or two other books, which, 
for that reason, I still have a favour for, were 
admitted to relieve the gloom of one dull sermon 
succeeding to another — there was far too much 
tedium annexed to the duties of the day ; and 
in the end it did none of us any good. 

My week-day tasks were more agreeable. My 
lameness and my solitary habits had made me a 
tolerable reader, and my hours of leisure were 
usually spent in reading aloud to my mother 
Pope's translation of Homer, which, excepting 
a few traditionary ballads, and the songs in 
Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, was the first poetry 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 

which I perused. My mother had good natural 
taste and great feeling : she used to make me 
pause upon those passages which expressed ge- 
nerous and worthy sentiments, and if she could 
not divert me from those which were descriptive 
of battle and tumult, she contrived at least to 
divide my attention between them. My own 
enthusiasm, however, was chiefly awakened by 
the wonderful and the terrible — the conmion 
taste of children, but in which I have remained 
a child even unto this day. I got by heart, not 
as a task, but almost without intending it, the 
passages with which I was most pleased, and 
used to recite them aloud, both when alone and 
to others — ^more willingly, however, in my hours 
of solitude, for I had observed some auditors 
smile, and I dreaded ridicule at that time of life 
more than I have ever done since. 

In [1778] I was sent to the second class of 
the Grammar School, or High School of Edin- 
burgh, then taught by Mr Luke Fraser, a good 
Latin scholar and a very worthy man. Though 
I had received, with my brothers, in private, 
lessons of Latin from Mr James French, now a 
minister of the Kirk of Scotland, I was never- 
theless rather behind the class in which I was 



38 LITE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

placed both in years and in progress. This was 
a real disadvantage, and one to which a boy of 
lively temper and talents ought to be as little 
exposed as one who might be less expected to 
make up his lee-way, as it is called. The situa- 
tion has the unfortunate effect of reconciling a 
T)oy of the former character (which in a posthu- 
mous work I may claim for my own) to holding 
a subordinate station among his class-fellows — 
to which he would otherwise aflBbc disgrace. 
There is also, from the constitution of the High 
School, a certain danger not sufficiently attended 
to. The boys take precedence in their places^ 
as they are called, according to their merit, and 
it requires a long while, in general, before even 
a clever boy, if he falls behind the class, or is 
put into one for which he is not quite ready, 
can force his way to the situation which his 
abilities really entitle him to hold. But, in the 
mean while, he is necessarily led to be the asso- 
ciate and companion of those inferior spirits with 
whom he is placed; for the system of precedence, 
though it does not limit the general intercourse 
among the boys, has nevertheless the effect of 
throwing them into clubs and coteries, according 
to the vicinity of the seats they hold. A boy 



AUTOBIOGBAl»HY. 39 

of good talents, therefore, placed even for a time 
among his inferiors, especially if they be also 
his elders, learns to participate in their pursuits 
and objects of ambition, which are usually very 
distinct from the acquisition of learning; and 
it will be well if he does not also imitate them 
in that indifference which is contented with 
bustling over a lesson so as to avoid punish- 
ment, without affecting superiority or aiming at 
reward. It was probably owing to this cir- 
cumstance, that, although at a more advanced 
period of life I have enjoyed considerable faci- 
lity in acquiring languages, I did not make any 
great figure at the High School — or, at least, 
any exertions which I made were desultory and 
little to be depended on. 

Our class contained some very excellent scho- 
lars. The first Dux was James Buchan, who 
retained his honoured place, almost without a 
day's interval, all the while we were at the High 
School. He was afterwards at the head of the 
medical staff in Egypt, and in exposing himself 
to the plague infection, by attending the hos- 
pitals there, displayed the same well-regulated 
and gentle, yet determined perseverance, which 
placed him most worthily at the head of his 



40 UFE OF 8XB WALTER SCOTT. 

school-fellows, while many lads of livelier parts 
and dispositions held an inferior statkm. The 
next best scholars (sed longo intervcUlo) were 
my friend David Douglas, the heir and Sieve of 
the celebrated Adam Smith, and James Hope, 
now a Writer to the Signet, both since well 
known and distinguished in their departments 
of the kw. As for myself, I glanced like a 
meteor from one end of the class to the other, 
and conunonly disgusted my kind master as 
much by negligence and firivolity, as I occa- 
sionally pleased him by flashes of intellect and 
talent. Among my companions, my good-nature 
and a flow of ready imagination rendered me 
very popular. Boys are unconmu>ttly just in 
their feelings, and at least equally generous. 
My lameness, and the efforts which I made to 
supply that disadvantage, by making up in 
addr^s what I wanted in activity, ei^aged the 
latter principle in my favour; and in the winter 
play hours, when hard exercise was impossible, 
my tales used to assemble an admiring audience 
round Lucky Brown's fireside, and happy was 
he that could sit next to the inexhaustible nar- 
rator. I was also, though often negligent of 
my own task, always ready to assist my friends. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHT. 41 

and heiioe I had a little party of staunch par- 
tisans and adherents, stout of hand and heart, 
though somewhat dull of head — the very tools 
for raising a hero to eminence. So, on the 
whole, I made a brighter figure in the yards 
than in the class* 

My father did not trust our education solely 
to our High School lessons. We had a tutor 
at home, a young man of an excellent disposi- 
tion, and a laborious student. He was bred to 
the Kirk, but unfortunately took such a very 
strong turn to fmaticism, that he afterwards 
resigned an excellent living in a seaport town, 
merely because he could not persuade the mari- 
ners of the guilt of setting sail of a Sabbath, — * 
in which, by the bye, he was less likely to be 

* I read not long since, in that authentic record called 
the Percy Anecdotes^ that I had heen educated at Mus- 
selhurgh school, where I had been distinguished as an 
absolute dunce ; only Dr Blair, seeing farther into the 
millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never 
.^as at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have 
met Dr Blair at my father's and elsewhere, I never had 
the good fortime to attract his notice, to my knowledge. 
Lastly, I was never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but 
an incorrigibly idle imp, who was always longing to do 
something else than what was enjoined him. — [1826.] 



42 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

successful, as, cceteris paribus^ sailors, from an 
opinion that it is a fortunate omen, always choose 
to weigh anchor on that day. The calibre of 
this young man's understanding may be judged 
of by this anecdote ; but in other respects, he 
was a faithful and active instructor ; and from 
him chiefly I learned writing and arithmetic. I 
repeated to him my French lessons, and studied 
with him my themes in the classics, but not 
classically. I also acquired, by disputing with 
him (for this he readily permitted), some know- 
ledge of school-divinity and church-history, and 
a great acquaintance in particular with the old 
books describing the early history of the Church 
of Scotland, the wars and sufferings of the Co- 
venanters, and so forth. I, with a head on fire 
for chivalry, was a Cavalier ; my friend was a 
Roundhead : I was a, Tory, and he was a Whig. 
I hated Presbyterians, and admired Montrose 
with his victorious Highlanders; he liked the 
Presbyterian Ulysses, the dark and politic Ar- 
gyle : so that we never wanted subjects of dis- 
pute ; but our disputes were always amicable. In 
all these tenets there was no real conviction on 
my part, arising out of acquaintance with the 
views or principles of either party ; nor had my 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 43 

antagonist address enough to turn the debate on 
such topics. I took up my politics at that pe- 
riod, as King Charles II. did his religion, from 
an idea that the Cavalier creed was the more 
gentlemanlike persuasion of the two. 

After having been three years under Mr Fraser, 
our class was, in the usual routine of the school, 
turned over to Dr Adam, the Rector. It was 
from this respectable man that I first learned the 
value of the knowledge I had hitherto considered 
only as a burdensome task. It was the fashion 
to remain two years at his class, where we read 
Caesar, and Livy, and Sallust, in prose ; Virgil, 
Horace, and Terence, in verse. I had by this 
time mastered, in some degree, the difficulties of 
the language, and began to be sensible of its 
beauties. This was really gathering grapes from 
thistles ; nor shall I soon forget the swelling of 
my little pride when the Rector pronounced, that 
though many of my school-fellows understood the 
Latin better, Gualterus Scott was behind few 
in following and enjoying the author's meaning. 
Thus encouraged, I distinguished myself by some 
attempts at poetical versions from Horace and 
Virgil. Dr Adam used to invite his scholars to 
such essays, but never made them tasks. I gained 



44 LIF£ OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

some distinction upon these occasions, and the 
Rector in future took much notice of me, and his 
judicious mixture of censure and praise \tent fax 
to counterbalance my habits of indolence and in- 
attention. I saw I was expected to do well, and 
I was piqued in honour to vindicate my master's 
favourable opinion. I climbed, therefore, to the 
first form; and, though I never made a first-rate 
Latinist, my schoolfellows, and whatwas of more 
consequence, I myself, considered that I had a 
character for learning to maintain. Dr Adam, 
to whom I owed so much, never failed to re- 
mind me of my obligations when I had made 
some figure in the literary world. He was, in- 
deed, deeply imbued with that fortunate vanity 
which alone could induce a man who has arms 
to pare and bum a muir, to submit to the yet 
more toilsome task of cultivating youth. As 
Catholics confide in the imputed righteousness 
of their saints, so did the good old Doctor plume 
himself upon the success of his scholars in life, 
all of which he never failed (and often justly) 
to claim as the creation, or at least the fi*uits, 
of his early instructions. He remembered the 
fate of every boy at his school during the fifty 
years he had superintended it, and always traced 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45 

their success or misfortunes entirely to their at- 
tention or negligence when under his care. His 
" noisy mansion," which to others would have 
been a melancholy bedlam, was the pride of his 
heart; and the only fatigues he felt, amidst din 
and tumult, and the necessity of reading themes, 
hearing lessons, and maintaining some degree of 
order at the same time, were relieved by com- 
paring himself to Caesar, who could dictate to 
three secretaries at once; — so ready is vanity to 
lighten the labours of duty. 

It is a pity that a man so learned, so admi- 
rably adapted for his station, so useful, so simple, 
so easily contented, should have had other sub- 
jects of mortification. But the magistrates of 
Edinburgh, not knowing the treasure they pos- 
sessed inDr Adam, encouraged a savage fellow, 
called Nicol, one of the undermasters, in insult- 
ing his person and authority. This man was an 
excellent classical scholar, and an admirable 
convivial humourist (which latter quality recom- 
mended him to the friendship of Bums); but 
worthless, drunken, and inhumanly cruel to the 
boys under his charge. He carried his feud 
against the Rector within an inch of assassinap- 
tion, for he waylaid and knocked him down in 



46 LII^ OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the dark. The favour which this worthless rival 
obtained in the town-council led to other con- 
sequences, which for some time clouded poor 
Adam's happiness and fair fame. When the 
French Revolution broke out, and parties ran 
high in approving or condemning it, the Doctor 
incautiously joined the former. This was very 
natural, for as all his ideas of existing govern- 
ments were derived from his experience of the 
town-council of Edinburgh, it must be admitted 
they scarce brooked comparison with the free 
states of Rome and Greece, from which he bor- 
rowed his opinions concerning republics. His 
want of caution in speaking on the political 
topics of the day lost him the respect of the boys, 
most of whom were accustomed to hear very 
different opinions on those matters in the bosom 
of their families. This, however (which was 
long after my time), passed away with other 
heats of the period, and the Doctor continued 
his labours till about a year since, when he was 
struck with palsy while teaching his class. He 
survived a few days, but becoming delirious 
before his dissolution, conceived he was still in 
school, and after some expressions of applause 
or censure, he said, " But it grows dark — the 
boys may dismiss," — and instantly expired. 



AUTOBIOGEAPHY-. 47 

From Dr Adam's class I should, according to 
the usual routine, have proceeded immediately 
to college. But, fortunately, I was not yet to 
lose, by a total dismission from constraint, the 
acquaintance with the Latin which I had ac- 
quired. My health had become rather delicate 
from rapid growth, and my father was easily 
persuaded to allow me to spend half-^-year at 
Kelso with my kind aunt. Miss Janet Scott, 
whose inmate I again became. It was hardly 
worth mentioning that I had frequently visited 
her during dur short vacations. 

At this time she resided in a small house, si- 
tuated very pleasantly in a large garden, to the 
eastward of the churchyard of Kelso, which 
extended down to the Tweed, It was then my 
father's property, from whom it was afterwards 
purchased by my uncle. My grandmother was 
now dead, and my aunt's only companion, be- 
sides an old maid-servant, was my cousin. Miss 
Barbara Scott, now Mrs Meik. My time was 
here left entirely to my own disposal, excepting 
for about four hours in the day, when I was 
expected to att^d the grammar-school of the 
village. The teacher, at that time, was Mr 
Lancelot Whale, an excellent classical scholar, 



48 LIFE OF SIS WALTER SCOTT. 

a humourist, and a worthy man. He had a 
supreme antipathy to the puns which his very 
uncommon name frequently gave rise to; inso- 
much, that he made his son spell the word Wale^ 
which only occasioned the young man being 
nicknamed the Prince of Wales by the military 
mess to which he belonged. As for Whale, 
senior, the least allusion to Jonah, or the term- 
ing him an odd fish, or any siipilar quibble, was 
sure to put him beside himself. In point of 
knowledge and taste, he was far too good for 
the situation he held, which only required that 
he should give his scholars a rough foundation 
in the Latin language. My time with him, 
though short, was spent greatly to my advantage 
and his gratification. He was glad to escape 
to Persius and Tacitus from the eternal Rudi- 
ments and Cornelius Nepos; and as perusing 
these authors with one who began to understand 
them was to him a labour of love, I made con- 
siderable progress under his instructions. I sus- 
pect, indeed, that some of the time dedicated to 
me was withdrawn from the instruction of his 
more regular scholars; but I was as grateful as 
I could. I acted as usher, and heard the inferior 
classes, and I spouted the speech of Galgacus 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 49 

at the public examination, which did not make 
the less impression on the audience that few of 
them probably understood one word of it. 

In the mean while my acquaintance with 
English literature was gradually extending itself. 
In the intervals of my school hours I had always 
perused with avidity such books of history of 
poetry or voyages and travels as chance pre* 
sented to me — not forgetting the usual, or ra- 
ther ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, 
eastern stories, romances, &c. These studies 
were totally unregulated and undirected. My 
tutor thought it almost a sin to open a profane 
play or poem ; and my mother, besides that she 
might be in some degree trammelled by the 
religious scruples which he suggested, had no 
longer the opportunity to hear me read poetry 
as formerly. I found, however, in her dressing- 
room (where I slept at one time) some odd vo- 
lumes of Shakspeare, nor can I easily forget the 
rapture with which I sate up in my shirt reading 
them by the light of a fire in her apartment, 
until the bustle of the family rising from supper 
warned me it was time to creep back to my bed, 
where I was supposed to have been safely depo- 
sited since nine o'clock. Chance, however, threw 

VOL. I. D 



50 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT- 

in my way a poetical preceptor. This was no 
other than the excellent and benevolent Dr 
Blacklock, well known at that time as a literary 
character. I know not how I attracted hiis at- 
tention, and that of some of the young men who 
boanled in his family ; but so it was that I be- 
came a frequent and favoured guiest. The kind 
old man opened to me the stores of his library, 
and through his recommendation I became inti- 
mate with Ossian and Spenser. I was delighted 
with both, yet I think chiefly with the latter 
poet. The tawdry repetitions of the Ossianic 
phraseology disgusted me rather sooner than 
might have been expected from my age. But 
Spenser I could have read for ever. Too young 
to trouble myself about the allegory, I consi- 
dered all the knights and ladies and dragons and 
giants in their outward and exoteric sense, and 
God only knows how dehghted I was to find 
myself in such society. As I had always a won- 
derful facility in retaining in my memory what- 
ever verses pleased me, the quantity of Spenser's 
stanzas which I could repeat was really marvel- 
lous* But this memory of mine was a very fickle 
ally, and has through my whole life acted mere- 
ly upon its own capricious motion, and might 



AUTOBIOGBAFHT. 51 

have enabled me to adopt old Beattie of Meikle-* 
dale's answer, when complimented by a certain 
reverend divine on the strength of the same {a-^ 
culty : — " No, sir/' answered the old Borderer, 
^^ I have no conmiand of my memory. It only 
retains what hits my fancy, and probably, sir, 
if you were to preach to me for two hom^, I 
would not be able when you finished to remem-^ 
ber a word you had been saying." My memory 
was precisely of the same kind : it seldom failed 
to preserve most tenaciously a &vourite passage 
of poetry, a playhouse ditty, or, above all, a 
Border-raid ballad ; but names, dates, and the 
other technicalities of history, escaped me in a 
most melancholy degree. The philosophy of 
history, a much more important subject, was 
also a sealed book at this period of my life;, 
but I gradually assembled much of what was 
striking and picturesque in historical narrative; 
and when, in riper years, I attended more to the 
deduction of general principles, I was furnished 
with a powerful host of examples in illustra-. 
tion of them. I was, in short, like an ignorant 
gamester, who kept up a good hand until he 
knew how to play it. 
^I left the High School, therefore, with a great 



52 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

quantity of general information, ill arranged, in- 
deed,, and collected without system, yet deeply 
impressed upon my mind ; readily assorted by 
my power of connexion and memory, and gilded, 
if I may be permitted to say so, by a vivid and 
active imagination. If my studies were not 
under any direction at Edinburgh, in the coun-i> 
try, it may be well imagined, they were less so* 
A respectable subscription library, a circulating 
library of ancient standing, and some private 
book-«helves, were open to my random perusal, 
and I waded into the stream like a blind mmi 
into a ford, without the power of searching my 
way, unless by groping for it. My appetite for 
books was as ample and indiscriminating as it 
was inde&tigable, and I since have had too fre- 
quently reason to repent that few ever read so 
much, and to so little purpose. 

Among the valuable acquisitions I made about 
this time was an acquaintance with Tasso's Je-* 
ilisalem Delivered, through the flat medium of 
Mr Hoole's translation. But above all, I then 
first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's 
ReUques of Ancient Poetry. As I had been 
from infancy devoted to legendary lore of this 
nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my at- 



AUTOBIOGBAFUT. 53 

tention, from the scarcity of materials and the 
rudeness of those which I possessed, it may be 
imagined, but cannot be described, with what 
delight I saw pieces of the same kind which had 
amused my childhood, and still continued in se- 
cret the Delilahs of my imagination, considered 
as the subject of sober research, grave commen- 
tary, and apt illustration, by an editor who 
showed his poetical genius was capable of emu- 
lating the best qualities of what his pious labour 
preserved. I remember well the spot where I 
read these volumes for the first time. It was 
beneath a huge platanus-tree, in the ruins of 
what had been intended for an old-fashioned 
arbour in the garden I have mentioned. The 
sunmier day sped onward so feist, that notwith- 
standing the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot 
the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, 
and was still found entranced in my intellectual 
banquet. To read and to remember was in this 
instance the same thing, and henceforth I over- 
whelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would 
hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the 
ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, 
I could scrape a few shillings together,, which 
were not common occurrences with me, I bought 



54 LIFE OF 8IE WALTER SCOTT. 

unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes, 
nor do I believe I ever read a book half so fre-* 
quently, or with half the enthusiasm. About 
this period also I became acquainted with the 
works of Richardson, and those of Mackenzie — 
(whom in later years I became entitled to call 
my friend) — with Fielding, Smollet, and some 
others of our best novelists. 

To this period also I can trace distinctly the 
awaking of that delightful feeling for the beau- 
ties of natural objects which has never since 
deserted me. The neighbourhood of Kelso, the 
most beautiful, if not the most romantic village 
in Scotland, is eminently calculated to awaken 
these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand 
in themselves, but venerable from their associa* 
tion. The meeting of two superb rivers, the 
Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song 
— the ruins of an ancient Abbey — the more 
distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle — the mo- 
dem mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as 
to combine the ideas of ancient baronial gran- 
deur with those of modem taste — are in them- 
selves objects of the first class; yet are so mixed, 
united, and melted among a thousand other 
beauties of a less prominent description, that 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55 

they hannonize into one general picture, and 
please rather by unison than by concord. I 
believe I have written unintelligibly upon this 
subject, but it is fitter for the pencil than the 
pen. The romantic feelings which I have de» 
scribed as predominating in my mind, naturally 
rei^ied upon and associated themselves with these 
grand features of the landscape around me; and 
the historical inddents, or traditional legends 
connected with many of them, gave to my ad- 
miration a sort of intense impression of reve- 
rence, which at times made my heart feel too 
big for its bosom. From this time the love c^ 
natural beauty, more especially when combined 
with ancient ruins, or remains of our fathers' 
piety or splendour, became with me an insa- 
tiable passion, which, if circumstances had per- 
mitted, I would willingly have gratified by 
travelling over half the globe. 

I was recalled to Edinburgh about the time 
when the College meets, and put at once to the 
Humanity class, under Mr Hill, and the first 
Greek class, taught by Mr Dalzell, The for- 
mer held the reins of discipline very loosely, 
and though beloved by his students, for he was 
a good-natured man as well as a good scholar, 



56 1.IFE OF SIR WALTEB, SCOTT. 

he had not the art of exdtmg our attention as 
well as liking. This was a dangerous charac- 
ter with whom to trust one who relished labour 
as little as I did, and amid the riot of his class 
I speedily lost much of what I had learned under 
Adam and Whale. At the Greek class, I might 
have made a better figure, for Professor Dalzell 
maintained a great deal of authority, and was 
not only himself an admirable scholar, but was 
always deeply interested in the progress of his 
students. But here lay the villany. Almost all 
my companions who had left the High School 
at the same time with myself, had acquired a 
smattering of Greek before they came to Col- 
lege. I, alas! had none; and finding myself 
far inferior to all my fellow-students, I could 
hit upon no better mode of vindicating my 
equality than by professing my contempt for 
the language, and my resolution not to leam it. 
A youth who died early, himself an excellent 
Greek scholar, saw my negligence and folly 
with pain, instead of contempt. He came to 
call on me in George's Square, and pointed out 
in the strongest terms the silliness of the con- 
duct I had adopted, told me I was distinguished 
by the name of the Greek Blockhead^ and ex- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 57 

horted me to redeem my reputation while it was 
called to-day. My stubborn pride received this 
advice with sulky civility ; the birth of my 
Mentor (whose name was Archibald, the son of 
an inn-keeper) did not, as I thought in my 
folly, authorize him to intrude upon me his ad- 
vice. The other was not sharp-sighted, or his 
consciousness of a generous intention overcame 
his resentment. He offered me his daily and 
nightly assistance, and pledged himself to bring 
me forward with the foremost of my class. I 
felt some twinges of conscience, but they were 
unable to prevail over my pride and self-conceit. 
The poor lad left me more in sorrow than in 
anger, nor did we ever meet again. All hopes 
of my progress in the Greek were now over ; 
insomuch that when we were required to write 
essays on the authors we had studied, I had the 
audacity to produce a composition in which I 
weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced 
him wanting in the balance. I supported this 
heresy by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy 
argument. The wrath of the Professor was 
extreme, while at the same time he could not 
suppress his surprise at the quantity of out- 
of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He 



58 LIFE OF SIU WALTER SCOTT. 

pronounced upon me the severe (sentence — diat 
dunce I was, and dunce was to remain — which, 
however, my excellent and learned friend lived 
to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy, at our 
literary Club at Fortune's, of which he was a 
distinguished member. 

Meanwhile, as if to eradicate my slightest 
tincture of Greek, I fell ill during the middle 
of Mr Dalzell*s second class, and migrated a 
second time to Kelso — where I again continued 
a long time reading what and how I pleased, 
and of course reading nothing but what af- 
forded me immediate entertainment. The only 
thing which saved my mind firom utter dissipa- 
tion was that turn for historical prnnuit, which 
never abandoned me even at the idlest period* 
I had forsworn the Latin classics for no reason 
I know of, unless because they were akin to the 
Greek ; but the occasional perusal of Bucha- 
nan's history, that of Mathew Paris, and other 
m<»ikish chronicles, kept up a kind of fionilia- 
rity with the language even in its rudest state. 
But I foigot the very letters of the Greek al- 
phabet ; a loss never to be repaired, considering 
what that language is, and who they were who 
employed it in their compositions. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 59 

About this period — or soon afterwards — my 
£Either judged it proper I should study mathe- 
matics, a study upon which I entered with all 
the ardour of novelty. My tutor was an aged 
person, Dr MacFait, who had in his time been 
distinguished as a teacher of this science. Age, 
however, and some domestic inconveniences, had 
diminished his pupils, and lessened his authority 
amongst the few who remained. I think, that 
had I been more fortunately placed for instruc- 
tion, or had I had the spur of emulation, I might 
have made some progress in this science, of 
which, under the circumstances I have mentioned, 
I only acquired a very superficial smattering. 

In other studies I was rather more fortunate ; 
I made some progress in Ethics under Professor 
John Bruce, and was selected as one of his 
students whose progress he approved, to read 
an essay before Principal Robertson. I was 
farther instructed in Moral Philosophy at the 
class of Mr Dugald Stewart, whose striking 
and impressive eloquence riveted the attention 
even of the most volatile student. To sum up 
my academical studies, I attended the class of 
History, then taught by the present Lord 
Woodhouselee, and, as far as I remember, no 



60 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Others, excepting those of the Civil and Muni- 
cipal Law. So that if my learning be flimsy 
and inaccurate, the reader must have some com- 
passion even for an idle workman, who had so 
narrow a foundation to build upon. If, how- 
ever, it should ever fall to the lot of youth to 
peruse these pages — let such a reader remember 
that it is with the deepest regret that I recollect 
in my manhood the opportunities of learning 
which I neglected in my youth ; that through 
every part of my literary career I have felt 
pinched and hampered by my own ignorance ; 
and that I would at this moment give half the 
reputation I have had the good fortune to ac- 
quire, if by doing so I could rest the remaining 
part upon a sound foundation of learning and 
science. 

I imagine my father's reason for sending me 
to so few. classes in the College, was a desire 
that I should apply myself particularly to my 
legal studies. He had not determined whether 
I should fill the situation of an Advocate or a 
Writer; but judiciously considering the tech- 
nical knowledge of the latter to be useful at 
least, if not essential, to a barrister, he resolved 
I should serve the ordinary apprenticeship of 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61 

five years to his own profession. I accordingly 
entered into indentures with my father about 
1785-6, and entered upon the dry and barren 
wilderness of forms and conveyances. 

I cannot reproach myself with being entirely 
an idle apprentice — far less, as the reader might 
reasonably have expected, 

" A clerk foredoom'd my father's soul to cross." 

The drudgery, indeed, of the office, I disliked, 
and the confinement I altogether detested ; but 
I loved my father, and I felt the rational pride 
and pleasure of rendering myself useful to 
him. I was ambitious also; and among my 
companions in labour, the only way to gratify 
ambition was to labour hard and well. Other 
circumstances reconciled me . in some measure 
to the confinement. The allowance for copy- 
money furnished a little fund for the menus 
plaisirs of the circulating library and the 
Theatre ; and this was no trifling incentive to 
labour. When actually at the oar, no man could 
pull it harder than I, and I remember writing 
upwards of 120 folio pages with no interval 
either for food or rest. Again, the hours of 



62 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

attendance on the office were lightened by the 
power of choosing my own books and reading 
them in my own way, which often consisted in 
beginning at the middle or the end of a volume. 
A deceased friend, who was a fellow apprentice 
with me, used often to express his surprise that, 
after such a hop-step-and-jump perusal, I knew 
as much of the book as he had been able to 
acquire from reading it in the usual manner. 
My desk usually contained a store of most mis- 
cellaneous volumes, especially works of fiction 
of every kind, which were my supreme deUght. 
I might except novels, unless those of the 
better and higher class, for though I read many 
of them, yet it was with more selection than 
might have been expected. The whole Jemmy 
and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred, and it 
required the art of Bumey, or the feeling of 
Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic 
tale. But all that was adventurous and ro- 
mantic I devoured without much discrimination, 
and I really believe I have read as much non- 
sense of this class as any man now living. 
Every thing which touched on knight-errantry 
was particularly acceptable to me, and I soon 
attempted to imitate what I so greatly admired. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHr. 63 

My efforts, however, were in the manner of the 
tale-teller, not of the bard. 

My greatest intimate, from the days of my 
school-tide, was Mr John Irving, now a Writer 
to the Signet. We lived near each other, and 
by joint agreement were wont, each of us, to 
compose a romance for the other's amusement. 
These legends, in which the martial and the 
miraculous always predominated, we rehearsed 
to each other during our walks, which were 
usually directed to the most solitary spots about 
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags. We natu- 
rally sought seclusion, for we were conscious 
no small degree of ridicule would have attended 
our amusement, if the nature of it had become 
known. Whole holidays were spent in this 
sing^ular pastime, which continued for two or 
three years, and had, I believe, no small effect 
in directing the turn of my imagination to the 
chivalrous and romantic in poetry and prose. 

Meanwhile, the translations of Mr Hoole 
having made me acquainted with Tasso and 
Ariosto, I learned from his notes on the latter, 
that the Italian language contained a fiind of 
romantic lore. A part of my earnings was 
dedicated to an Italian class which I attended 



64 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

twice ar-week, and rapidly acquired some pro- 
ficiency, I had previously renewed and ex- 
tended my knowledge of the French language, 
from the same principle of romantic research. 
Tressans romances^ the Bibliotheque Bleue, 
and Bibliotheque de Romans, were already 
familiar to me, and I now acquired similar in- 
timacy with the works of Dante, Boiardo, 
Pulci, and other eminent Italian authors. I 
fastened also, like a tiger, upon every collection 
of old songs or romances which chance threw 
in my way, or which my scrutiny was able to 
discover on the dusty shelves of James Sibbald's 
circulating library in the Parliament Square. 
This collection, now dismantled and dispersed, 
contained at that time many rare and curious 
works, seldom found in such a collection. Mr 
Sibbald himself, a man of rough manners but 
of some taste and judgment, cultiyated music 
and poetry, and in his shop I had a distant 
view of some literary characters, besides the 
privilege of ransacking the stores of old French 
and Italian books, which were in little demand 
among the bulk of his subscribers. Here I 
saw the unfortunate Andrew Macdonald, author 
of Vimonda; and here, too, I saw at a distance 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65 

the boast of Scotland, Robert Burns. Of the 
latter I shall presently have occasion to speak 
more fiilly. 

I am inadvertently led to confound dates 
while I talk of this remote period, for, as I have 
no notes, it is impossible for me to remember 
with accuracy the progress of studies, if they 
deserve the name, so irregular and miscella- 
neous. But about the second year of my ap- 
prenticeship, my health, which, from rapid 
growth and other causes, had been hitherto 
rather uncertain and delicate, was affected by 
the breaking of a blood-vessel. The regimen 
I had to undergo on this occasion was far from 
agreeable. It was Spring, and the weather 
raw and cold, yet I was confined to bed with 
a single blanket, and bled and blistered till I 
scarcely had a pulse left. I had all the appetite 
of a growing boy, but was prohibited any sus- 
tenance beyond what was absolutely necessary 
for the support of nature, and that in vegetables 
alone. Above all, with a considerable disposi- 
tion to talk, I was not permitted to open my 
lips without one or two old ladies who watched 
my couch being ready at once to souse upon 
me, " imposing silence with a stilly sound." 

I VOL. I. B 

I 



66 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

My only refuge was reading and playing at 
chess. To the romances and poetry, which I 
chiefly delighted in, I had always added the 
study of history, especially as connected with 
military events. I was encouraged in this lat- 
ter study by a tolerable acquaintance with geo- 
graphy, and by the opportunities I had enjoyed 
while with Mr MacFait to learn the meaning 
of the more ordinary terms of fortification. 
While, therefore, I lay in this dreary and silent 
solitude, I fell upon the resource of illustrating 
the battles I read of by the childish expedient 
of arranging shells, and seeds, and pebbles, so 
as to represent encountering armies. Diminutive 
cross-bows were contrived to mimic artillery, 
and with the assistance of a friendly carpen- 
ter, I contrived to model a fortress, which, 
like that of Uncle Toby, represented whatever 
place happened to be uppermost in my imagi* 
nation. I fought my way thus through Ver- 
tot's Knights of Malta — a book which, as it 
hovered between history and romance, was ex- 
ceedingly dear to me; and Orme's interesting 
and beautiful History of Indostan, whose co- 
pious plans, aided by the clear and luminous 
explanations of the author, rendered my imita- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY- 67 

tive amusement peculiarly easy. Other momenta 
of these weary weeks were spent in looking at 
the Meadow Walks, by assistance of a combi- 
nation of mirrors so arranged that, while lying 
in bed, I could see the troops march out to ex- 
ercise, or any other incident which occurred on 
that promenade. 

After one or two relapses, my constitution 
recovered the injury it had sustained, though 
for several months afterwards I was restricted 
to a severe vegetable diet. And I must say, in 
passing, that though I gained health under this 
necessary restriction, yet it was far from being 
agreeable to me, and I was affected whilst 
under its influence with a nervousness which I 
never felt before or since. A disposition to start 
upon slight alarms — a want of decision in feel- 
ing and acting, which has not usually been my 
failing — an acute sensibility to trifling incon- 
veniences — and an unnecessary apprehension of 
contingent misfortunes, rise to my memory as 
connected with my vegetable diet, although 
they may very possibly have been entirely the 
result of the disorder, and not of the cure. Be 
this as it may, with this illness I bade farewell 
both to disease and medicine, for since that 




\ 

68 UFE OF SIE Vf. 

time, till the hour I am na 

enjoyed a state of the mo 

having only had to complain"^ 

headaches or stomachic affections, 

been long without taking exercise, or '. 

too convivially — the latter having been 

sionally though not habitually the error of my^ 

youth, as the former has been of my advanced 

life. 

My frame gradually became hardened with 
my constitution, and being both tali and mus- 
cular, I was rather disfigured than disabled by 
my lameness. This personal disadvantage, did 
not prevent me from taking much exercise von 
horseback, and making long journeys on foox! 
in the course of which I often walked from^ 
twenty to thirty miles a-day. A distinct in- 
stance occurs to me. I remember waUdng with 
poor James Ramsay, my fellow-apprentice, now 
no more, and two other friends, to breakfast at 
Prestonpans. We spent the forenoon in visiting 
the ruins at Seton, and the field of battle at 
Preston — dined at Prestonpans on tiled had^ 
docks ^ very sumptuously — drank half a bottle 
of port each, and returned in the evening. 
This could not be less than thirty miles, nqr 



1 






AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 69 

do 1 remember being at all fatigued upon the 
occasion. 

These excursions on foot or horseback fonned 

by far my most favourite amusement. I have 

all my life delighted in travelling, though I 

have never enjoyed that pleasure upon a large 

*y \ scale. It was a propensity which I sometimes 

'" V indulged so unduly as to alarm and vex my 

parents. Wood, water, wilderness itself, had an 

inexpressible charm for me, and I had a dreamy 

way of going much further than I intended, so 

\ that imconsciously my return was protracted, 

and my parents had sometimes serious cause of 

■ uneasiness. For example, I once set out with 

^ Mr George Abercromby* (the son of the im- 

1^ i;iiortal General), Mr William Clerk, and some 

others, to fish in the lake above Howgate, and 

\ die stream which descends from it into the Esk. 

' We breakfasted at Howgate, and fished the 

whole day; and while we were on our return 

next morning, I was easily seduced by William 

Clerk, then a great intimate, to visit Penny cuik 

I House, the seat of his family. Here he and 

I John Irving, and I for their sake, were over- 

♦ Now Lord Abercromby. — [1826.] 



70 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

whelmed with kindness by the late Sir John 
Clerk and his lady, the present Dowager Lady 
Clerk, The pleasure of looking at fine pictures, 
the beauty of the place, and the flattering ho^^ 
pitality of the owners, drowned all recollection 
of home for a day or two. Meanwhile our com- 
panions, who had walked on without being 
aware of our digression, returned to Edinburgh 
without us, and excited no small alarm in my 
father's household. At length, however, they 
became accustomed to my escapades. My &ther 
used to protest to me on such occasions that he 
thought I was bom to be a strolling pedlar, and 
though the prediction was intended to mortify 
my conceit, I am not sure that I altogether dis- 
liked it. I was now familiar with Shakspeare, 
and thought of Autolycus's song — 

" Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, 
And merrily hent the stile-a : 
A merry heart goes all the day, 
Your sad tires in a mile-a." 

My principal object in these excuraons was 
the pleasure of seeing romantic scenery, or what 
afforded me at least equal pleasure, the places 
which had been distinguished by remarkable 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 71 

historical events* The delight with which I re- 
garded the former, of course had general appro- 
bation, but I often found it difficult to procure 
sympathy with the interest I felt in the latter. 
Yet to me, the wandering over the field of 
Bannockbum was the source of more exquisite 
pleasure than gazing upon the celebrated land- 
scape from the battlements of Stirling castle. 
I do not by any means infer that I was dead to 
the feeling of picturesque scenery ; on the con- 
trary, few delighted more in its general effect. 
But I was unable with the eye of a painter to 
dissect the various parts of the scene, to com- 
prehend how the one bore upon the other, to 
estimate the effect which various features of the 
view had in producing its leading and general 
effect. I have never, indeed, been capable of 
doing this with precision or nicety, though my 
latter studies have led me to amend and arrange 
my original ideas upon the subject. Even the 
humble ambition, which I long cherished, of 
making sketches of those places which inte- 
rested me, from a defect of eye or of hand was 
totally ineffectual. After long study and many 
efforts, I was unable to apply the elements of 
perspective or of shade to the scene before me, 



72 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

and was obliged to relinquish in despair an art 
which I was most anxious to practise. But 
show me an old castle or a field of battle, and 
I was at home at once, filled it with its comba- 
tants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed 
my hearers by the enthusiasm of my description. 
In crossing Magus Moor, near St Andrews, 
the spirit moved me to give a picture of the 
assassination of the Archbishop of St Andrews 
to some fellow-travellers with whom I was ac- 
cidentally associated, and one of them, though 
well acquainted with the story, protested my 
narrative had frightened away his night's sleep. 
I mention this to show the distinction between 
a sense of the picturesque in action and in 
scenery. If I have since been able in poetry 
to trace with some success the principles of the 
latter, it has always been with reference to its 
general and leading features, or under some 
alliance with moral feeling; and even this 
proficiency has cost me study. — Mean while 
I endeavoured to make amends for my igno- 
rance of drawing, by adopting a sort of tech- 
nical memory respecting the scenes I visited. 
Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch 
from a tree — these constituted what I called 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 73 

my log-book ; and I intended to have a set of 
chessmen out of them, each having reference 
to the place where it was cut — as the kings 
from Falkland and Holy-Rood; the queens 
from Queen Mary's yew-tree at Crookston; 
the bishops from abbeys or episcopal palaces j 
the knights from baronial residences ; the rooks 
from royal fortresses ; and the pawns generally 
from places worthy of historical note. But this 
whimsical design I never carried into execution. 
With music it was even worse than with 
painting. My mother was anxious we should 
at least learn Psalmody ; but the incurable de- 
fects of my voice and ear soon drove my teacher 
to despair.* It is only by long practice that I 

* The late Alexander Campbell, a warm-hearted man, 
and an enthusiast in Scottish music, which he sang most 
beautifully, had this ungrateful task imposed on him. 
He was a man of many accomplishments, but dashed 
with a hizarrerie of temper which made them useless to 
their proprietor. He wrote several books — as a Tour 
in Scotland, &c. — and he made an advantageous mar- 
riage, but fell nevertheless into distressed circumstances, 
which I had the pleasure of relieving, if I could not 
remove. His sense of gratitude was very strong, and 
showed itself oddly in one respect. He would never 
allow that I had a bad ear ; but contended, that if I did 



74 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

have acquired the power of selecting or dis- 
tinguishing melodies; and although now few 
things delight or affect me more than a simple 
tune sung with feeling, yet I am sensible that 
even this pitch of musical taste has only been 
gained by attention and habit, apd, as it were, 
by my feeling of the words being associated 
with the tune, I have, therefore, been usually 
unsuccessful in composing words to a tune, 
although my friend, Dr Clarke, and other 
musical composers, have sometimes been able to 
make a happy union between their music and 
my poetry. 

In other points, however, I began to make 
some amends for the irregularity of my educa- 
tion. It is well known that in Edinburgh one 
great spur to emulation among youthful stu- 
dents is in those associations called literary 

not imderstand music, it was because I did not choose 
to leaim it. But when he attended us in George*s 
Square, our neighbour. Lady Gumming, sent to beg the 
boys might not be all flogged precisely at the same 
hour, as, though she had no doubt the punishment was 
deserved, the noise of the concord was really dreadful, 
Robert was the only one of our family who could sing, 
though my father was musical, and a performer on the 
violoncello at the gentlemen's concerts, — [1826.] 



AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 76 

societies, formed not only for the purpose of 
debate, but of composition. These undoubtedly 
have some disadvantages, where a bold, petulant, 
and disputatious temper happens to be combined 
Mdth considerable information and talent. Still, 
however, in order to such a person being actu- 
ally spoiled by his mixing in sudi debates, his 
talents must be of a very rare nature, or his 
effrontery must be proof to every species of as- 
sault ; for there is generally in a well-selected 
society of this nature, talent sufficient to meet 
the forwardest, and satire enough to penetrate 
the most undaunted. I am particularly obliged 
to this sort of club for introducing me about my 
seventeenth year into the society which at one 
time I had entirely dropped; for, from the time 
of my illness at college, I had had little or no 
intercourse with any of my class-companions, 
one or two only excepted. Now, however, about 
1788, I began to feel and take my ground in 
society. A ready wit, a good deal of enthu- 
siasm, and a perception that soon ripened into 
tact and observation of character, rendered me 
an acceptable companion to many young men 
whose acquisitions in philosophy and science 
were infinitely superior to any thing I could 
boast. 



76 LIFE OF SIR WALTEB SCOTT. 

In the business of these societies — for I was 
a member of more than one successively — I 
cannot boast of having made any great figure. 
I never was a good speaker unless upon some 
subject which strongly animated my feelings ; 
and, as I was totally unaccustomed to composi- 
tion, as well as to the art of generalizing my 
ideas upon any subject, my literary essays were 
but very poor work. I never attempted them 
unless when compelled to do so by the regula- 
tions of the society, and then 1 was like the 
Lord of Castle Rackrent, who was obliged to 
cut down a tree to get a few faggots to boil the 
kettle ; for the quantity of ponderous and mis- 
cellaneous knowledge, which I really possessed 
on many subjects, was not easily condensed, or 
brought to bear upon the object 1 wished parti- 
cularly to become master of. Yet there occur- 
red opportunities when this odd lumber of my 
brain, especially that which was connected with 
the recondite parts of history, did me, as Ham- 
let says, " yeoman's service." My memory of 
events was like one of the large, old-fashioned 
stone-€annons of the Turks — very difficult to 
load well and discharge, but making a powerful 
effect when by good chance any object did come 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 77 

within range of its shot. Such fortunate oppor- 
tunities of exploding with effect maintained my 
literary character among my companions, with 
whom I soon met with great indulgence and 
regard. The persons with whom I chiefly lived 
at this period of my youth were William Clerk, 
already mentioned; James Edmonstoune, of 
Newton ; George Abercromby ; Adam Fergu- 
son, son of the celebrated Professor Ferguson, 
and who combined the lightest and most airy 
temper with the best and kindest disposition; 
John Irving, already mentioned ; the Honour- 
able Thomas Douglas, now Earl of Selkirk ; 
David Boyle,* — and two or three others, who 
sometimes plunged deeply into politics and me- 
taphysics, and not unfrequently " doffed the 
world aside, and bid it pass." 

Looking back on these times, I cannot ap- 
plaud in all respects the way in which our days 
were spent. There was too much idleness, and 
sometimes too much conviviality : but our hearts 
were warm, our minds honourably bent on know- 
ledge and literary distinction ; and if I, certainly 
the least informed of the party, may be permit- 

• Now Lord Justice- Clerk [1826.] 



78 LIFE OF SIE WALTEB SCOTT. 

ted to bear witness, we were not without the 
fair and creditable means of attaining the dis- 
tinction to which we aspired. In this society I 
was naturally led to correct my former useless 
course of reading; for — feeling myself greatly 
inferior to my companions in metaphysical phi- 
losophy and other branches of regular study— 
I laboured, not without some success, to acquire 
at least such a portion of knowledge as might 
enable me to maintain my rank in conversation. 
In this I succeeded pretty well; but unfortu- 
nately then, as often since through my life, I 
incurred the deserved ridicule of my friends from 
the superficial nature of my acquisitions, which 
being, in the mercantile phrase, got up for so- 
ciety, very often proved flimsy in the texture ; 
and thus the gifts of an uncommonly retentive 
memory and acute powers of perception were 
sometimes detrimental to their possessor, by en- 
couraging him to a presumptuous reliance upon 
them* 

Amidst these studies, and in this society, 
the time of my apprenticeship elapsed ; and in 
1790, or thereabouts, it became necessary that 
I should seriously consider to which department 
of the law I was to attach myself. My father 



AUTOBIOGRAI'HY. 79 

beliaved with the most parental kindness. He 
offered, if I preferred his own profession, im- 
mediately to take me into partnership with him, 
wliich, though his business was much dimi- 
nished, still afforded me an immediate prospect 
of a handsome independence. But he did not 
disguise his wish that I should relinquish this 
situation to my younger brother, and embrace 
the more ambitious profession of the bar. I 
had little hesitation in making my choice — for 
I was never very fond of money; and in no 
other particular do the professions admit of a 
comparison. Besides, I knew and felt the in- 
conveniences attached to that of a writer ; and 
I thought (like a young man) many of them 
were " ingenio non subeunda meo." The ap- 
pearance of personal dependence which that pro- 
fession requires was disagreeable to me; the 
sort of connexion between the client and the 
attorney seemed to render the latter more sub- 
servient than was quite agreeable to my nature ; 
and, besides, I had seen many sad examples 
while overlooking my father's business, that the 
utmost exertions, and the best meant services, 
do not secure the man of business, as he is 
called, from great loss, and most ungracious 



80 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

treatment on the part of his employers. The 
bar, though I was conscious of my deficiencies 
as a public speaker, was the line of ambition 
and liberty ; it was that also for which most of 
my contemporary friends were destined. And, 
lastly, although I would willingly have relieved 
my father of the labours of his business, yet I 
saw plainly we could not have agreed on some 
particulars if we had attempted to conduct it 
together, and that I should disappoint his ex- 
pectations if I did not turn to the bar. So to 
that object my studies were directed with great 
ardour and perseverance during the years 1789, 
1790, 1791, 1792. 

In the usual course of study, the Roman or 
Civil Law was the first object of my attention — 
the second, the Municipal Law of Scotland. 
In the course of reading on both subjects, I 
had the advantage of studying in conjunction 
with my friend William Clerk, a man of the 
most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, 
and who, should he ever shake loose the fetters 
of indolence by which he has been hitherto 
trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in 
the highest degree. We attended the regular 
classes of both laws in the University of Edin- 



AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 81 

burgh. The Civil Law chair, now worthily filled 
by Mr Alexander Irving, might at that time 
be considered as in aheyancey since the person 
by whom it was occupied had never been fit for 
the situation, and was then almost in a state of 
dotage. But the Scotch Law lectures were those 
of Mr David Hume, who still continues to 
occupy that situation with as much honour to 
himself as advantage to his country. I copied 
over his lectures twice with my own hand, fi-om 
notes taken in the class, and when I have had 
occasion to consult them, I can never sufficiently 
admire the penetration and clearness of con- 
ception which were necessary to the arrange- 
ment of the fabric of law, formed originally 
under the strictest influence of feudal principles, 
and innovated, altered, and broken in upon by 
the change of times, of habits, and of man- 
ners, until it resembles some ancient castle, 
partly entire, partly ruinous, partly dilapidated, 
patched and altered during the succession of 
ages by a thousand additions and combinations, 
yet still exhibiting, with the marks of its an- 
tiquity, symptoms of the skill and wisdom of its 
founders, and capable of being analyzed and 
made the subject of a methodical plan by an 

VOL. I. F 



82 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

architect who can understand the various styles 
of the different ages in which it was subjected 
to alteration. Such an architect has Mr Hume 
been to the law of Scotland, neither wandeiin^ 
into fanciful and abstruse disquisitions, whic^ are 
the more proper subject of the antiquary, nor 
satisfied with presentiDg to his pupils a dry and 
undigested detail of the laws in their present 
state, but combiiung the past state of our legal 
' enactments with the jwesent, and tracing clearly 
and judidously the changes which took place^ 
and the causes which led to them. 

Under these auspices, I commenced my legal 
studies. A little parlour was assigned me m 
my father's house, which was spacious and con* 
venient, and I took the exclusive possession of 
my new reahns with all the feelings of novelty 
^Imd liberty. Let me do justice to the only 
years of my life in whidt I appUed to learning 
with stem, steady, and undeviating industry* 
The rule of my friend Clerk and myself was, 
that we should mutually quaUfy ourselves for 
undergoing an examination upon certain points 
of law every morning in the week, Sundays 
excepted. This was at first to have taken place 
alternately at each other's bouses, but we soon 



▲UTOBIOGHAPHT^ 83 

discovered that my friend's resolution was in- 
adequate to severing him from his couch at the 
early hour fixed for this exercitation. Accord- 
ingly, I agreed to go every morning to his • 
house, which, being at the extremity of Princess 
Street, New Town, was a walk of two miles. 
With great punctuality, however, I beat him 
up to his task every morning before seven 
o'clock, and in the course of two summers, we 
went, by way of question and answer, through 
the whole of Heinecdus's Analysis of the In- 
stitutes and Pandects, as well as through the 
smaller copy of Erskine's Institutes of the Law 
of Scotland. This course of study enabled us 
to piuss with credit the usual trials, which, by 
the regulations of the Faculty of Advocates, 
must be undergone by every candidate for ad- 
mission into their body. My friend William 
Clerk and I passed these ordeals on the same 
days — namely, the Civil Law trial on the [30th 
June 1791], and the Scots Law trial on the 
[6th July 1792.] On the [11th July 1792], 
we both assumed the gown with all its duties 
and honours. 

My progress in life during these two or three 
years had been gradually enlarging my ac*- 



84 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

quaintance, and ^cilitating my entrance into 
good company. My father and mother, already 
advanced in life, saw little society at home, 
excepting that of near relations, or upon par- 
ticular occasions, so that I was left to form 
connexions in a great measure for myself* It 
is not difficult for a youth with a real desire to 
please and be pleased, to make his way into 
good society in Edinburgh — or indeed any 
where — and my family connexions, if they did 
not greatly further, had nothing to embarrass 
my progress. I was a gentleman, and so wel- 
come any where, if so be I could behave myself, 
as Tony Lumpkin says, "in a concatenation 
accordingly." 



LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 85 



CHAPTER 11. 

IllustraMons of the Autobiographical Fragment — ■ 
Edinburgh — Sandy-Knowe — Bath — Preston- 
pans, 

1771-1778. 



Sib Walter Scott opens his brief account of his 
ancestry with a playful allusion to a trait of national 
character, which has, time out of mind, furnished 
merriment to the neighbours of the Scotch ; but the 
zeal of pedigree was deeply rooted in himself, and he 
would have been the last to treat it with serious dis-» 
paragement. It has often been exhibited under circum- 
stances sufficiently grotesque; but it has lent strength 
to many a good impulse, sustained hope and self-respect 
under many a difficulty and distress, armed heart and 
nerve to many a bold and resolute struggle for inde- 
pendence ; and prompted also many a generous act of 
assistance, which under its influence alone could have 
been accepted without any feeling of degradation. 



86 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

He speaks modestly of his own descent; for^ while 
none of his predecessors had ever sunk below the 
situation and character of a gentleman, he had but to 
go three or four generations back, and thence, as far 
as they could be followed, either on the paternal or 
maternal side, they were to be found moving in the 
highest ranks of our baronage. When he fitted up in 
his later years the beautiful hall of Abbotsford, he was 
careful to have the armorial bearings of his forefathers 
blazoned in due order on the compartments of its 
roof; and there are few in Scotland, under the titled 
nobility, who could trace their blood to so many stocks 
of historical distinction. 

In the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Notes 
to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the reader will find 
sundry notices of the << Bauld Rutherfords that were 
sae stout," and the Swintons of Swinton in Berwick- 
shire, the two nearest houses on the maternal side. 
An illustrious old warrior of the latter family. Sir 
John Swinton, extolled by Froissart, is the hero of 
the dramatic sketch, Halidon Hill ; and it is not to 
be omitted, that through the Swintons Sir Walter 
Scott could trace himself to William Alexander, Earl 
of Stirling, the poet and dramatist.* His respect for 

• On Sir Walter's copy of " Recreations witb the Muses, by 
William Earl of Stirling, 1637," there is the foUowing MS. 
note : — " Sir William Alexander, sixth Baron of Menstrie, and 
first Earl of Stirling, the friend of Drummond of Hawthoraden and 



PEDIGREE. 87 

* 

the worthy barons of Newmains and Dryburgh, of 
whom, in right of his father^s mother, he was the 
representatiye, and in whose Tenerable sepulchre his 
remains now rest, was testified by his " Memorials of 
the HaUburtons," a small yolume printed (for priyate 
circulation only) in the year 1820. His own male 
ancestors of the family of Harden, whose lineage is 
traced by Douglas in his Baronage of Scotland back 
to the middle of the fourteenth century, when they 
branched off from the great blood of Buccleuch, have 
been so largely celebrated in his various writings, that 
I might perhaps content myself with a general refer- 
ence to those pages, their only imperishable monument. 
The antique splendour of the ducal house itself has 
been dignified to all Europe by the pen of its remote 
descendant; but it may be doubted whether his genius 
could have been adequately developed, had he not 
attracted, at an early and critical period, the kindly 
recognition and support of the Buccleuchs. 

The race had been celebrated, however, long before 

Ben Jonson, died in 1640. His eldest son, William Viscount 
Canada, died before his father, leaving one son and three daugh- 
ters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of 
William, first Marquis of Douglas. Margaret, the second of these 
daughters, married Sir Robert Sinclair of Longformacus in the 
Merse, to whom she bore two daughters, Anne and Jean. Jean 
Sinclair, the younger daughter, married Sir John Swinton of 
Swinton ; and Jean Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grand- 
mother of the proprietor of this volume." 



88 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

his day, by a minstrel of its own ; nor did he conceal 
his belief that he owed much to the influence exerted 
over his juvenile mind by the rude but enthusiastic 
clan-poetry of old SatcheUs^ who describes himself on 
his title-page as 

** Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler, 
And one that can write nane, 
But just the Letters of his Name/* 

His " True History of several honourable Families of 
the Right Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of 
Roxburgh and Selkirk, and others adjacent, gathered 
out of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and Traditions 
of our Fathers," includes, among other things, a string 
of complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird 
of Raeburn ; and the copy which had belonged to that 
gentleman was in all likelihood about the first book 
of verses that fell into the poet's hand.* How con- 

• His family well remember the delight which he expressed on 
receiving, in 1818, a copy of this first edition, a small dark quarto 
of 1688, from his friend Constable. He was breakfasting when 
the present was delivered, and said, '* This is indeed the resurrec- 
tion of an old ally — I mind spelling these lines.'* He read aloud 
the jingling epistle to his own great-great-grandfather, which, like 
the rest, concludes with a broad hint that, as the author had nei- 
ther lands nor flocks — ** no estate left except his designation ** — 
the more fortunate kinsman who enjoyed, like Jason of old, a &ir 
share of fleecei, might do worse than bestow on him some of King 
James's^ broa4 pieces. On rising from table, Sir Walter imme- 



PEDIGREE SATCHELLS. 89 

tinually its wild and uncouth doggrel was on his lips 
to his latest day, all his familiars can testify; and 
the passages which he quoted with the greatest zest 
were those commemorative of two ancient worthies, 
hoth of whom had had to contend against physical 
misfortune similar to his own. The former of these, 
according to Satchells, was the immediate founder of 
the branch originally designed of Sinton, afterwards 
of Harden: — 

" It 18 four hundred wbters past in order 
Since tliat fiuccleuch was Warden in the Border ; 
A son lie had at that same tide, 
Which was so lame could neither run nor ride. 



diately wrote as follows on the hlank leaf opposite to poor Satchells' 
honest title-page — 

"I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier, but a 

soldier's lover. 
In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover, 
That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million 

times over ; 
And to every true-bom Scott I do wish as many golden pieces. 
As ever were hairs in Jason's and Medea's golden fleeces." 

The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that the 

copy now at Ahbotsford was the only one Mr Constable had ever 

Been — and no wonder, for the author's ennoy is in these words: — 

" Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly 
Amongst the nobles and gentility ; 
Thou'rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns, 
But given to worthy persons of renown. 
The number's few I've printed, in regard 
Bfiy charges have been great, and I hope reward ; 
I caus'd not print many above twelve score, 
And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more.** 



90 UFE OF Sm WALTEB SCOTT. 

John, this lame 8oa, if my author speaks true, 
He sent him to St Mungo's in Glasgu, 
Where he resiained a scholar's time, 
Then married a wife according to his mind. . . . 
And betwixt them twa was procreat 
Headshaw, Askirk, Sinton, and Glack.*' 

But, if the scholarship of John the Lamiter furnished 
his descendant with many a mirthful allusion, a far 
greater favourite was the memory of William the 
Boltfooty who followed him in the sixth generation. 

" The Laird and Lady of Harden 
Betwixt them procreat was a son 
Called William Boltfoot of Harden" — 

The emphasis with which this next line was quoted 
I can never forget — 

" He did survive to be a man." 

He was, in fact, one of the ^' prowest knights'' of the 
whole genealogy — a fearless horseman and expert 
spearman, renowned and dreaded; and I suppose I 
have heard Sir Walter repeat a dozen times, as he 
was dashing into the Tweed or Ettrick, " rolling red 
from hrae to hrae," a stanza from what he called an 
old ballad, though it was most likely one of his own 
early imitations : — 

" To tak the foord he aye was first. 

Unless the English loons were near ; 
Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man, 
Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear." 



FEDIGBEE HABDEN. 9 ] 

" From childhood's earliest hour," says the poet in 
one of his last Journals, ^^ I have rebelled against 
external circumstances." How largely the traditional 
famousness of the stalwart Boltfoot may haye helped 
to deyelope this element of his character, I do not 
pretend to say; but I cannot avoid regretting that 
Lord Byron had not discovered such another '^ De- 
formed Transformed" among his own chivalrous pro- 
genitors. 

So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, 
he used to make an autumnal excursion, with what- 
ever friend happened to be his guest at the time, to 
the tower of Harden, the incwnahvla of his race. A 
more picturesque scene for the fastness of a lineage 
of Border marauders could not be conceived ; and so 
much did he delight in it, remote and inaccessible as 
its situation is, that, in the earlier part of his life, he 
had nearly availed himself of his kinsman's permission 
to fit up the dilapidated joee^ for his summer residence. 
Harden (the ravine of hares) is a deep, dark, and nar-^ 
row glen, along which a little mountain brook flows 
to join the river Borthwick, itself a tributary of the 
Teviot. The castle is perched on the brink of the 
precipitous bank, and from the ruinous windows you 
look down into the crows' nests on the summits of 
the old mouldering elms, that have their roots on the 
margin of the stream far below: — 



92 lilFE OF SIR WALTJER SCOTT. 

** Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand, 
Rolls her red tide to Teviot's western strand, 
Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn, 
Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn, 
Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale, 
And clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail. 
A hardy race who never shrunk from war. 
The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar. 
Here fixed his mountain home ; — a wide domain, 
And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain ; 
But what the niggard ground of wealth denied. 
From fields more bless'd his fearless arm supplied.'' * 

It was to this wild retreat that the Harden of the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel, the Auld Wat of a hundred 
Border ditties, brought home, in 1567? his beautiful 
bride, Mary Scott, " the Flower of Yarrow," whose 
grace and gentleness have lived in song along with 
the stern virtues of her lord. She is said to have 
chiefly owed her celebrity to the gratitude of an Eng-« 
lish captive, a beautiful child, whom she rescued from 
the tender mercies of Wat's moss-troopers, on their 
return from a foray into Cumberland* The youth 
grew up under her protection, and is believed to have 
been the composer both of the words and the music 

* Leyden, the author of these beautiful lines, has borrowed, as 
the Lay of the Last Minstrel did also, from one of Satchelk* 
primitive couplets—- 

*« If heather-tops had been corn of the best. 
Then Buccleugh mill had gotten a noble grist." 



FEDIGRKE, 93 

of many of the best old songs of the Border. As 
Leyden says, 

'* His are the strains whose wandering echoes thrill 
The shepherd lingering on the twilight hill. 
When evening hrings the merry folding hours. 
And sun-eyed daisies close their winking flowers. 
He lived o*er Yarrow's Flower to shed the tear. 
To strew the holly leaves o'er Harden's bier ; 
But none was found above the minstrel's. tomb. 
Emblem of peace, to bid the daisy bloom. 
He, nameless as the race from which he sprung. 
Saved other names, and left his own unsung." 

We are told, that when the last bullock which Auld 
Wat had provided from the English pastures was con- 
sumed, the Flower of Yarrow placed on her table a 
dish containing a pair of clean spurs ; a hint to the 
company that they must bestir themselves for their 
next dinner. Sir Walter adds, in a note to the Min- 
strelsy, " Upon one occasion when the village herd 
was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird 
heard him call loudly to drive out Harden's cow. 
' Harden's cow!' echoed the affronted chief; * is it 
come to that pass ? By my faith they shall soon say 
Harden's Aryc' (cows.) Accordingly, he sounded his 
bugle, set out with his followers, and next day re- 
turned with a bow ofkye^ and a hassen'd (brindled) 
huU. On his return with this gallant prey, he passed 
ft very large haystack. It occurred to the provident 



94 UFE OF SIB WALTEtt SCOTT. 

laird that this would be extremely convenient to. fod- 
der his new stock of cattle; but as no means of trans* 
porting it were obvious, he was fain to take leave of 
it with the apostrophe, now become proverbial — ^By 
my saul, had ye hut four feet ye shovld not stand 
lang there' In short, as Froissart says of a similar 
class of feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them 
that was not too heavy or too hot," 

Another striking chapter in the genealogical his-> 
tory belongs to the marriage of Auld Wat's son and 
heir, afterwards Sir William Scott of Harden, dis- 
tinguished by the early favour of James VI., and 
severely fined for his loyalty under the usurpation of 
CromwelL The period of this gentleman's youth 
was a very wild one in that district. The Border 
clans still made war on each other occasionally, much 
in the fashion of their forefathers; and the young 
and handsome heir of Harden, engaging in a foray 
upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank, 
treasurer-depute of Scotland, was overpowered by 
that baron's retainers, and carried in shackles to his 
castle, now a heap of ruins, on the banks of the 
Tweed. Elibank's "doomtree" extended its broad 
arms close to the gates of his fortress, and the indig* 
nant laird was on the point of desiring his prisoner 
to say a last prayer, when his more considerate dame 
interposed milder counsels, suggesting that the cul- 
prit was bom to a good estate, and that they had 



FEDIGBEE. 95 

three unmarried daughters. Young Ibrden, not, it 
is said, without hesitation, agreed to save his life by 
taking the plainest of the three off their hands, and 
the contract of marriage, executed instantly on the 
parchment of a drum, is still in the charter-chest of 
his noble representative. 

Walter Scott, the third son of this coaple, was 
the first Laird of Raebum, already alluded to as one 
of the patrons of Satchells. He married Isabel Mac- 
dougal, daughter of Macdougal of Makerstoun — a 
family of great antiquity and distincti(»i in Koxburgh- 
shire, of whose blood, through various alliances, the 
poet had a large share in his veins. Eaebum, though 
the son and brother of two steady cavaliers, and mar- 
ried into a family of the same political creed, became 
a Whig, and at last a Quaker ; and the reader will 
find, in one of the notes to The Heart of Mid-Lo- 
thian, a singular account of the persecution to which 
this backsliding exposed him at the hands of both his 
own and his wife^s relations. He was incarcerated 
(a.i>. 1666), first at Edinburgh and then at Jed- 
burgh, by order of the Privy Council — his children 
were forcibly taken from him, and a heavy sum was 
levied on his estate yearly, for the purposes of their 
education beyond the reach of his perilous influence* 
*' It appears," says Sir Walter, in a MS. memoran- 
dum now before me, ^< that the Laird of Makerstoun, 
his brother-in-law> joined with Raeburn's own elder 



96 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

brother, Harden, in this singular persecution, as it 
will now be termed by Christians of all persuasions. 
It was observed by the people that the male line of 
the second Sir William of Harden became extinct in 
1710, and that the representation of Makerstoun 
soon passed into the female line. They assigned as 
a cause, that when the wife of Raeburn found her- 
self deprived of her husband, and refused permission 
even to see her children, she pronounced a maledic- 
tion on her husband's brother as well as on her own, 
and prayed that a male of their body might not in- 
herit their property." 

The MS. adds, " of the first Raeburn's two sons it 
may be observed, that, thanks to the discipline of the 
Privy Council, they were both good scholars." Of 
these sons, Walter, the second, was the poet's great- 
grandfather, the enthusiastic Jacobite of the autobio* 
graphical fragment, — who is introduced, 
** With amber beard and flaxen bair, 
And reverend apostolic air," 
in the epistle prefixed to the sixth canto of Marmion. 
A good portrait of Bearded Wat, painted for his 
friend Pitcaim, was presented by the Doctor's grand- 
son, the Earl of Kellie, to the father of Sir Walter. 
It is now at Abbotsford ; and shows a considerable 
resemblance to the poet.* Some verses addressed to 
the original by his kinsman Walter Scott of Harden, 

* See the Engraving at the beginning of this volume. 



^ FARENTAGE. 97 

are given in one of the Notes to Marmion. The old 
gentleman himself is said to have written yerses oc- 
casionally, both English and Latin $ but I never 
heard more than the burden of a drinking-song — 

" Barba crescat, barba crescat, 
Donee carduus revirescat."* 

Scantily as the worthy Jacobite seems to have been 
provided with this world's goods, he married the 
daughter of a gentleman of good condition, " through 
whom," says the IMS. memorandum already quoted, 
" his descendants have inherited a connexion with 
some honourable branches of the Slioch nan Diav" 
mid, or Clan of Campbell." To this connexion Sir 
Walter owed, as we shall see hereafter, many of those 
early opportunities for studying the manners of the 
Highlanders, to which the world are indebted for 
Waverley, Rob Roy, and the I-.ady of the Lake. 

* Since this book was first publi;shed, I have seen in print *' A 

Poem on the death of Master Walter Scott, who died at Kelso, 

November 3, 1729," written, it is said, by Sir William Scott of 

Thirlestane, Bart., the male ancestor of Lord Napier. It ha» 

these lines : -^ 

" His converse breathed the Christian. On his tongue 
The praises of religion ever hung ; 
YThence it appeared he did on solid ground 
Commend the pleasures which himself had found. . . . 
His venerable mien and goodly air 
Fix on our hearts impressions strong and fair. 
Full seventy years had shed their silvery glow 
Around his locks, and made his beard to grow ; 
That decent beard, which in becoming grace 
Did spread a reverend honour on his tace," &c.--[l888.3 

VOL. I. G 



98 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Robert Scott, the son of Beardie, formed also an 
honourable alliance. His father-in-law, Thomas 
Haliburton,* the last but one of the " good lairds 
of Newmains," entered his marriage as follows in the 
domestic record, which Sir Walter's pious respect 
induced him to have printed nearly a century after- 
wards:— " My second daughter Barbara is married 
to Robert Scott, son to Walter Scott, uncle to Rae- 
burn, upon this sixteen day of July 1728, at my 
house of Dryburgh, by Mr James Innes, minister of 

* " From the genealogical deduction in the Memorials, it ap- 
pears that the Haliburtons of Newmains were descended from and 
represented the ancient and once powerful family of Haliburton of 
Mertoun, which became extinct in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. The first of this latter family possessed the lands and 
barony of Mertoun by a charter granted by Archibald Earl of 
Douglas and Lord of Galloway (one of those tremendous lords 
whose coronets counterpoised the Scottish crown) to Henry de 
Haliburton, whom he designates as his standard-bearer, on ac- 
count of his service to the earl in England. On this account the 
Haliburtons of Mertoun and those of Newmains, in addition to the 
arms borne by the Haliburtons of Dirleton (the ancient chiefs of 
that once great and powerful, but now almost extinguished name) 
— viz. fiTy on a bend axure^ three mascles of the first— gave 
the distinctive bearing of a buckle of the second in the sinister 
canton. These arms still appear on various old tombs in the 
abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, as well as on their house at 
Dryburgh, which was built in 1572.'* — MS, Memorandum, 1820. 
Sir Walter was served heir to these Haliburtons soon after the 
date of this Memorandum, and thenceforth quartered the arms 
above described with those of his paternal family. 



PARENTAGE. 99 

Mertoun, their mothers being cousings ; may the 
blessing of the Lord rest upon them, and make them 
comforts to each other and to all their relations ;*' to 
which the editor of the Memorials adds this note — 
" May God grant that the prayers of the excellent 
persons who have passed away, may avail for the 
benefit of those who succeed them! — Abbotsfordy 
Nov. 1824/' 

I need scarcely remind the reader of the exquisite 
description of the poet's grandfather, in the Intro* 
duction to the third canto of Marmion — 



• ** the thatched mansion's grey-hair'd sire, 



Wise without learning, plain and good, 
And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood ; 
Whose eye, in age quick, clear, and keen. 
Showed what in youth its glance had been ; 
Whose doom discording neighbours soughti 
Content with equity unbought." 

In the Preface to Guy Mannering, we have an anec- 
dote of Robert Scott in his earlier days: " My grand- 
father, while riding over Charterhouse Moor, then a 
very extensive common, fell suddenly among a large 
band of gipsies, who were carousing in a hollow sur- 
rounded by bushes. They instantly seized on his 
bridle with shouts of welcome, exclaiming that they 
had often dined at his expense, and he must now stay 
and share their cheer. My ancestor was a little 
alarmed, for he had more money about his person 



100 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

than he cared to risk in such society. However, 
being" naturally a bold liyely-spirited man, he entered 
into the humour of the thing, and sat down to the 
feast, vHiich consisted of all the varieties of game, 
poultry, pigs, and so forth, that could be collected by 
a wide and indiscriminate system of plunder. The 
dinner was a very merry one, but my relative got a 
hint from some of the older gipsies, just when * the 
mirth and fun grew fast and furious,* and mounting 
his horse accordingly, he took a French leave of his 
entertainers." His grandson might have reported 
more than one scene of the like sort in which he was 
himself engaged, while hunting the same district, not 
in quest of foxes or of cattle sales, like the goodman 
of Sandy-Knowe, but of ballads for the Minstrelsy. 
Gipsy stories, as we are told in the same Preface, 
were frequently in the mouth of the old man when 
his face " brightened at the evening fire," in the days 
of the poet's childhood. And he adds, that *' as Dr 
Johnson had a shadowy recollection of Queen Anne 
fts a stately lady in black, adorned with diamonds," 
90 his own memory was haunted with '^ a solemn re^ 
membrance of a woman of more than female height, 
dressed in a long red cloak, who once made her ap^ 
pearance beneath the thatched roof of Sandy-Knowe, 
commenced acquaintance by giving him an apple, 
and whom he looked on, nevertheless, with as much 
awe as the future doctor, High Church and Tory as 



PARENTAGE. 101 

he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen." 
This was Madge Gordon, grand-daughter of Jean 
Gordon, the prototjrpe of Meg Merrilees. 

Of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, also, there is a very 
tolerable portrait at Abbotsford, and the likeness of 
the poet to his grandfather must have forcibly struck 
eyery one who has seen it. Indeed, but for its want- 
ing some inches in elevation of forehead — (a consi- 
derable want, it must be allowed) — the picture might 
be mistaken for one of Sir Walter Scott. The keen 
shrewd expression of the eye, and the remarkable 
length and compression of the upper lip, bring him 
exactly before me as he appeared when entering with 
all the zeal of a professional agriculturist into the 
merits of a pit of marie discovered at Abbotsford. 
Had the old man been represented with his cap on 
his head, the resemblance to one particular phasis of 
the most changeful of countenances would have been 
perfect. 

Robert Scott had a numerous progeny, and Sir 
Walter has intimated his intention of recording se- 
veral of them " with a sincere tribute of gratitude" 
in the contemplated prosecution of his autobiography. 
Two of the younger sons were bred to the naval 
service of the East India Company ; one of whom 
died early and unmarried ; the other was the excel- 
lent Captain Robert Scott, of whose kindness to his 
nephew some particulars are given in the Ashestiel 



102 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

Fragment, and more will occur hereafter. Another 
son, Thomas, followed the profession of his father 
with ability, and retired in old age upon a handsome 
independence, acquired by his industrious exertions. 
He was twice married, — first to his near relation, a 
daughter of Raeburn ; and secondly to Miss Ruther- 
ford of Know-South, the estate of which respectable 
family is now possessed by his son Charles Scott, an 
amiable and high-spirited gentleman, who was always 
a special favourite with his eminent kinsman. The 
death of Thomas Scott is thus recorded in one of 
the MS. notes on his nephew's own copy of the 
Haliburton Memorials : — " The said Thomas Scott 
died at Monklaw, near Jedburgh, at two of the clock, 
27th January 1823, in the 90th year of his life, and 
fully possessed of all his faculties. He read till nearly 
the year before his death ; and being a great musi- 
cian on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his deathbed, 
a favourite tune played over to him by his son James, 
that he might be sure he left him in full possession 
of it. After hearing it, he hummed it over himself, 
and corrected it in several of the notes. The air 
was that called Sour Plumbs in Galashiels* When, 
barks and other tonics were given him during his 
last illness, he privately spat them into his hand- 
kerchief, saying, as he had lived all his life without 
taking doctor's dru^s, he wished to die without do- 
ing so." 



FABXNTAGE. 103 

I visited this old man, two years before his death, 
in company with Sir Walter, and thought him about 
the most venerable figure I had ever set my eyes on 
— tall and erect, with long flowing tresses of the 
most silvery whiteness, and stockings rolled up over 
his knees, after the fashion of three generations back. 
He sat reading his Bible without spectacles, and did 
not, for a moment, perceive that any one had entered 
his room, but on recognising his nephew he rose, 
with cordial alacrity, kissing him on both cheeks, 
and exclaiming, " God bless thee, Walter, my man \ 
thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always 
good." His remarks were hvely and sagacious, and 
delivered with a touch of that humour which seems 
to have been shared by most of the family. He had 
the air and manner of an ancient gentleman, and 
must in his day have been eminently handsome. I 
saw more than once, about the same period, this 
respectable man's sister, who had married her cousin 
Walter, Laird of Raeburn — thus adding a new link 
to the closeness of the family connexion. She also 
must have been, in her youth, remarkable for per- 
sonal attractions ; as it was, she dwells on my me- 
mory as the perfect picture of an old Scotch lady, 
with a great deal of simple dignity in her bearing, 
but with the softest eye, and the sweetest voice, and 
a charm of meekness and gentleness about every 
look and expression ; all which contrasted strikingly 



104 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

enough with the stern dry aspect and manners of 
her husband, a right descendant of the moss-troopers 
of Harden, who never seemed at his ease but on 
horseback, and continued to be the boldest fox- 
hunter of the district, even to the verge of eighty. 
The poet's aunt spoke her native language pure and 
undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that 
vulgarity which now seems almost unavoidable in 
the oral use of a dialect so long banished from courts, 
and which has not been avoided by any modern 
writer who has ventured to introduce it, with the 
exception of Scott, and I may add, speaking gene- 
rally, of Burns. Lady Kaebum, as she was univer- 
sally styled, may be numbered with those friends of 
early days whom her nephew has alluded to in one 
of his prefaces, as preserving what we may fancy to 
have been the old Scotch of Holyrood. 

The particulars which I have been setting down 
may help English readers to form some notion of 
the structure of society in those southern districts c^ 
Scotland. When Satchells wrote, he boasted that 
Buccleuch could summon to his banner one hundred 
lairds, all of his own name, with ten thousand more 
— landless men, but still of the same blood. The 
younger sons of these various lairds were, through 
many successive generations, portioned off with frag- 
ments of the inheritance, until such subdivision could 
he cfirried no farther, and then the cadet, of neces- 



PARENTAGE. 105 

sity, either adopted the profession of arms, in some 
foreign service very frequently, or became a culti- 
vator on the estate of his own elder brother, of the 
chieftain of his brancTi, or of the great chief and 
patriarchal protector of the whole clan. Until the 
commerce of England, and above all, the military and 
civil services of the English colonies, were thrown 
open to the enterprise of the Scotch, this system of 
things continued entire. It still remained in force 
to a considerable extent at the time when the Good- 
man of Sandy-Knowe was establishing his children 
in the world — and I am happy to say, that it is far 
from being abolished even at the present day. It 
was a system which bound together the various 
classes of the rural population in bonds of mutual 
love and confidence : the original community of 
lineage was equally remembered on all sides ; the 
landlord could count for more than his rent on the 
tenant, who regarded him rather as a father or an 
elder brother, than as one who owed his superiority 
to mere wealth ; and the farmer who, on fit occa* 
sions, partook on equal terms of the chase and the 
hospitality of his landlord, went back with content 
and satisfaction to the daily labours of a vocation 
which he found no one disposed to consider as de- 
rogating from his gentle blood. Such delusions, if 
delusions they were, held the natural arrogance of 
riches in check, taught the poor man to believe that 



106 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

in virtuous poverty he had nothing to blush for, and 
spread over the whole being of the community the 
gracious spirit of a primitive humanity. 

Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy* 
Knowe, appears to have been the first of the family 
that ever adopted a town life, or any thing claiming 
to be classed among the learned professions. His 
branch of the law, however, could not in those days 
be advantageously prosecuted without extensive con- 
nexions in the country; his own were too respectable 
not to be of much service to him in his caUing, and 
they were cultivated accordingly. His professional 
visits to Roxburghshire and Ettrick Forest were, in 
his vigorous life, very frequent ; and though he was 
never supposed to have any tincture either of ro- 
mance or poetry in his composition, he retained to 
the last a warm affection for his native district, with 
a certain reluctant flavour of the old feelings and 
prejudices of the Borderer. I have little to add to 
Sir Walter's short and respectful notice of his father, 
except that I have heard it confirmed by the testi- 
mony of many less partial observers. According to 
every account, he was a most just, honourable, con- 
scientious man; only too high of spirit for some 
parts of his business. *^ He passed from the cradle 
to the grave," says a surviving relation, " without 
making an enemy or losing a friend. He was a most 
Affectionate parent, and if he discouraged, rather than 



PAUENTAGE. 107 

otherwise, his son's early devotion to the pursuits 
which led him to the height of literary eminence, it 
was only because he did not understand what such 
things meant, and considered it his duty to keep his 
yoiing man to that path in which good sense and 
industry might, humanly speaking, be thought sure 
of success.'* 

Sir Walter's mother was short of stature, and by 
no means comely, at least after the days of her early 
youth. She had received, as became the daughter of 
an eminently learned physician, the best sort of edu- 
cation then bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scot- 
land. The poet, speaking of Mrs Euphemia Sinclair, 
the mistress of the school at which his mother was 
reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr Robert 
Chambers, said that ^' she must have been possessed 
of uncommon talents for education, as all her young 
ladies were, in after life, fond of reading, wrote and 
spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history 
and the belles lettres, without neglecting the more 
homely duties of the needle and accompt book ; and 
perfectly well-bred in society." Mr Chambers adds, 
" Sir W. further communicated that his mother, and 
many others of Mrs Sinclair's pupils, were sent 
afterwards to he finished off by the Honourable Mrs 
Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a 
style of manners which would now be considered 
intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early 
training upon the mind of Mrs Scott, that even 



108 WPE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

when she approached her eightieth yeat, she took 
as much care to avoid touching her chair with her 
hack, as if she had still heen under the stern eye of 
Mrs Ogilvie."* The physiognomy of the poet bore, 
if their portraits may be trusted, no resemblance to 
either of his parents.f 

Mr Scott was nearly thirty years of age when he 
married, and six children, born to him between 1759 
and 1766, all perished in infancy.j: A suspicion that 
the close situation of the College Wynd had been un- 
favourable to the health of his family, was the motive 

• See Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, vol. ii. pp. 127- 
131. The functions here ascribed to Mrs Ogilvie may appear to 
modern readers little consistent with her rank. Such things, 
however, were not uncommon in those days in poor old Scotland. 
Ladies with whom I have conversed in my youth well remembered 
an HonourabU Mrs Maiiland who practised the obstetric art in 
the Cowgate. 

"Y Portraits of Mr and Mrs Scott are engraved for subsequent 
volumes of tliis work. 

X In Sir Walter Scott*s desk, after his death, there was found 
a little packet containing six locks of hair, with this inscription in 
the handwriting of his mother : — 

" 1. Anne Scott, bdrn March 10, 1739. 

2. Robert Scott, born August 22, 1760. 

3. John Scott, born November 28, 1761. 

4. Robert Scott, born June 7, 1763. 

5. Jean Scott, born March 27, 1765. 

6. Walter Scott, born August 30, 1766. 

All these are dead, and none of my present family was born till 
Spme time afterwards." 



SANDY-KNOWE. 109 

that induced him to remove to the house which he 
ever afterwards occupied in George's Square. This 
removal took place shortly after the poet's birth ; 
and the children born subsequently were in general 
healthy. Of a family of twelve, of whom six lived 
to maturity, not one now survives ; nor have any of 
them left descendants, except Sir Walter himself, 
and his next and dearest brother, Thomas Scott. 

He says that his consciousness of existence dated 
from Sandy-Knowe ; and how deep and indelible was 
the impression which its romantic localities had left 
on his imagination, I need not remind the readers of 
Marmion and the Eve of St. John. On the summit 
of the Crags which overhang the farm-house stands 
the ruined tower of Smailholme, the scene of that 
fine ballad; and the view from thence takes in a wide 
expanse of the district in which, as has been truly 
said, every field has its battle, and every rivulet its 
song: — 

** The lady looked in mournful mood, 
Looked over hill and valet 
O'er Mertoun's wood, and Tweed's fair flood. 
And all down Teviotdale."-~ 

Mertoun, the principal seat of the Harden family, 
with its noble groves; nearly in front of it, across 
the Tweed, Lessudden, the comparatively small but 
still venerable and stately abode of the Lairds of Rae- 



110 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

burn; and the hoary Abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded 
with yew-trees as ancient as itself, seem to lie almost 
below the feet of the spectator. Opposite him rise 
the purple peaks of Eildon, the traditional scene of 
Thomas the Rmer's interview with the Queen of 
Faerie; behind are the blasted peel which the seer 
of Erceldoun himself inhabited, ' the Broom of the 
Cowdenknowes/ the pastoral valley of the Leader, 
and the bleak wilderness of Lammermoor. To the 
eastward the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks 
the horizon, as the eye travels towards the range of 
the Cheviot. A few miles westward, Melrose, " like 
some tall rock with lichens grey," appears clasped 
amidst the windings of the Tweed; and the distance 
presents the serrated mountains of the Gala, the 
Ettripk, and the Yarrow, all famous in song. Such 
were the objects that had painted the earliest images 
.on the eye of the last and greatest of the Border 
Minstrels. 

As his memory reached to an earlier period of 
childhood than that of almost any other • person, so 
assuredly no poet has given to the world a picture of 
the dawning feelings of life and genius, at once so 
simple, so beautiful, and so complete, as that of his 
epistle to William Erskine, the chief literary confi- 
dant and counsellor of his prime of manhood. 

** Whether an impulse that has birth 
Soon as the infant wakes on earth. 



SANDY-KNOWE. Ill 

One with our feelings and our powers. 

And rather part of us than ours ; 

Or whether fitlier term'd the sway 

Of habit, formed in early day, 

Howe er derived, its force confest 

Rules with despotic sway ihe breast. 

And drags us on by viewless chain. 

While taste and reason plead in vain. . . . 

Thus, while I ape the measure wild 

Of tales that charm*d me yet a child. 

Rude though they be, still with the chime 

Return the thoughts of early time. 

And feelings rous'd in life's first day. 

Glow in the line and prompt the lay. 

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower 

Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour. 

It was a barren scene aiid wild 

Where naked cliffs were rudely piled ; 

But ever and anon between 

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green ; 

And well the lonely infant knew 

Recesses where the wall-flower grew 

And honey*8uckle loved to crawl 

Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. 

I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade 

The sun in all its round surveyed ; 

And still I thought that shattered tower 

The mightiest work of human power, 

And marvelled as the aged hind. 

With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, 

Of forayers who, with headlong force, ^ 

Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, 

Their southern rapine to renew, 

Far in the distant Cheviots blue. 



112 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

And home returning, fill'd the hall 

With revel, wassel-rout, and hrawl. 

Methought that still with trump and clang 

The gateway's broken arches rang ; 

Methought grim features, seam'd with sears, 

Glared through the windows* rusty bars ; 

And ever, by the winter hearth, 

Old tales I heard of wo or mirth, 

Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms. 

Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms — 

Of patriot battles won of old 

By Wallace Wight and Bruce the Bold — 

Of later fields of feud and fight, 

When, pouring from their Highland height. 

The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, 

Had swept the scarlet ranks away. 

While stretched at length upon the floor, 

Again I fought each combat o'er, 

Pebbles and shells, in order laid. 

The mimic ranks of war displayed. 

And onward still the Scottish Lion bore. 

And still the scattered Southron fled before." 

There are still living in that neighbourhood two 
old women, who were in the domestic service of 
Sandy-Knowe, when the lame child was brought 
thither in the third year of his age. One of them, 
Tibby Hunter, remembers his coming well; and that 
" he was a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all 
about the house." The young ewemilkers delighted, 
she says, to carry him about on their backs among 
the crags; and he was " very gleg (quick) at the up- 



SANDY-KNOWE. 113 

take, and soon kenned every sheep and lamb by head- 
mark as well as any of them." His great pleasure, 
however, was in the society of the " aged hind,*' 
recorded in the epistle to Erskine. " Auld Sandy 
Ormistoun,'' called, from the most dignified part of 
his function, " the Cow-bailie," had the chief superin- 
tendence of the flocks that browsed upon " the velvet 
tufts of loveliest green." If the child saw him in the 
morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old man 
would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him 
to keep him company as he lay watching his charge. 

'* Here was poetic impulse given 
By the green hill and clear blue heaven." 

The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, 
which signified to the maid-servants in the house 
below when the little boy wished to be carried home 
again. He told his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, 
when spending a summer day in his old age among 
these well-remembered crags, that he delighted to 
roll about on the grass all day long in the midst of 
the flock, and that '' the sort of fellowship he thus 
formed with the sheep and lambs had impressed his 
mind with a degree of affectionate feeling towards 
them which had lasted throughout life." There is a 
story of his having been forgotten one day among the 
knolls when a thunder-storm came on; and his aunt, 
suddenly recollecting his situation, and running out 
VOL. I. H 



114 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

to bring him home, is said to have found him lying 
on his hack, clapping his hands at the lightning, and 
cmng out, " Bonny, bonny !" at every flash, 

I find the following marginal note on his copy of 
Allan Ramsay's Tea- Table Miscellany (edition 1724): 
" This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert 
Scott, and out of it I was taught Hardiknute by heart 
before I could read the ballad myself. It was 'the 
first poem I ever learnt — the last I shall ever forget." 
According to Tibby Hunter, he was not particularly 
fond of his book, embracing every pretext for joining 
his friend the Cow-bailie out of doors; but " Miss 
Jenny was a grand hand at keeping him to the bit, 
and by degrees he came to read brawly."* An early 
acquaintance of a higher class, Mrs Duncan, the wife 
of the present excellent minister of Mertoun, informs 
me, that though she was younger than Sir Walter, 
she has a dim remembrance of the interior of Sandy- 
Knowe — " Old Mrs Scott sitting, with her spinning- 
wheel, at one side of the fire, in a clean clean parlour; 
the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his elbow-chair 
opposite; and the little boy lying on the carpet, at 

* This old woman still possesses "the banes" (bones)— that is 
to say, the boards — of a Psalm-book, which Master Walter gavQ 
her at Sandy- Knowe. " He chose it," she says, **of a very large 
print, that I might be able to read it when I was very auld-^ 
forty year attld; but the bairns pulled the leaves out langsyne.'* 



BATH, 115 

]the old man's feet, listening to the Bible, or whatever 
good book Miss Jenny was reading to them.*' 

Robert Scott died before his grandson was four 
years of age; and I heard him mention when he was 
an old man that he distinctly remembered the writing 
and sealing of the funeral letters, and aU the cere- 
monial of the melancholy procession as it left Sandy- 
Knbwe. I shall conclude my notices of the residence 
at Sandy-Knowe with observing, that in Sir Walter's 
account of the friendly clergyman who so often sat 
at his grandfather's fireside, we cannot fail to trace 
many features of the secluded divine in the novel of 
Saint Ronan's Well. 

I have nothing to add to what he has told us of 
that excursion to England which interrupted his re- 
sidence at Sandy-Knowe for about a twelvemonth, 
except that I had often been astonished, long before 
I read his autobiographic fragment, with the minute 
recollection he seemed to possess of all the striking 
features of the city of Bath, which he had never seen 
again since he quitted it before he was six years of 
age.* He has himself alluded, in his Memoir, to the 
lively recollection he retained of his first vi«it to the 
theatre, to which his uncle Robert carried him to 
witness a representation of As You Like It. In his 

• The Miniature engraved on the title-page of this volume was 
painted at Bath. 



116 MFE OF SIR WAliTEE SCOTT. 

Reviewal of the Life of John Kemble, written in 
1 826, he has recorded that impression more fully, 
and in terms so striking, that I must copy them in 
this place: — 

'< There are few things which those gifted with any 
degree of imagination recollect with a sense of more 
anxious and mysterious delight than the first dramatic 
representation which they have witnessed. The un-* 
usual form of the house, filled with such gproups of 
crowded spectators, themselves forming an extraor- 
dinary spectacle to the eye which has neyer witnessed 
it before; yet all intent upon that wide and mystic 
curtain, whose dusky undulations permit us now and 
then to discern the momentary glitter of some gaudy 
form, or the spangles of some sandalled foot, which 
trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as that 
of day; then the music, which, in itself a treat su£S- 
cient in every other situation, our inexperience mis- 
takes for the very play we came to witness; then the 
slow rise of the shadowy curtain, disclosing, as if by 
actual magic, a new land, with woods, and mountains, 
and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by another sun, and 
inhabited by a race of beings different from ourselves, 
whose language is poetry, — whose dress, demeanour, 
and sentiments seem something supernatural, — and 
whose whole actions and discourse are calculated not 
for the ordinary tone of every-day life, but to ex- 



BATH. 117 

cite the stronger and more powerful faculties — to 
melt with sorrow, overpower with terror, astonish 
with the marvellous, or convulse with irreastible 
laughter: — all these wonders stamp indelible imprefr* 
sions on the memory. Those mixed feelings also, 
which perplex us between a sense that the scene is 
but a plaything, and an interest which ever and anon 
surprises us into a transient belief that that which so 
strongly affects us cannot be fictitious ; those mixed 
and puzzling feelings, also, are exciting in the highest 
degree. Then there are the bursts of applause, like 
distant thunder, and the permission afforded to clap 
our little hands, and add our own scream of delight 
to a sound so commanding. All this, and much, 
much more, is fresh in our memory, although, when 
we felt these sensations, we looked on the stage which 
Garrick had not yet left. It is now a long while 
since; yet we have not passed many hours of such 
unmixed delight, and we still remember the sinking 
lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain longings 
which we felt that the music would again sound, the 
magic curtain once more arise, and the enchanting 
dream recommence ; and the astonishment with which 
we looked upon the apathy of the elder part of our 
company, who, having the means, did not spend every 
evening in the theatre." * 

* Miscellaneous Prose Works, voU xx« p. 154* 



y^ 



118 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Probably it was this performance that first tempted 
him to open the page of Shakspeare. Before he re-« 
turned to Sandj^-Knowe, assuredly, notwithstanding* 
the modest language of his autobiography, the pro- 
gress which had been made in his intellectual educa^ 
tion was extraordinary; and it is impossible to doubt 
that his hitherto almost sole tutoress, Miss Jenny 
Scott, must have been a woman of tastes and acquire-^ 
ments very far above what could have been oftea 
found among Scotch ladies, of any but the highest 
class at least, in that day. In the winter of I777y 
she and her charge spent some few weeks — not 
happy weeks, the " Memoir " hints them to have 
been — in George's Square, Edinburgh ; and it so 
happened, that during this little interval, Mr and 
Mrs Scott received in their domestic circle a guest 
capable of appreciating, and, fortunately for us, of 
recording in a very striking manner the remarkable 
developement of young Walter's faculties. Mrs 
Cockbum, mentioned by him in his Memoir as the 
authoress of the modem " Flowers of the Forest,'* 
born a Rutherford, of Fairnalie, in Selkirkshire, was 
distantly related to the poet's mother, with whom she 
had through life been in habits of intimate friendship. 
This accomplished woman was staying at Ravelstone^ 
in the vicinity of Edinburgh, a seat of the Keiths of 
Dunnotar, nearly related to Mrs Scott, and to her- 
self. With some of that family she spent an evening 



EDINBURGH 1777. 119 

in George's Square. She chanced to be writing next 
day to Dr Douglas, the well-known and much re- 
spected minister of her native parish, Galashiels ; and 
her letter, of which the Doctor's son has kindly given 
me a copy, contains the following passage: — 

" Edinburgh, Saturday night, 16th of * the gloomy month when 
the people of England hang and drown themselves.' 

* . » ♦ ♦ « I lojg^ night supped in Mr Waltel* 
Scott's. He has the most extraordinary genius of 
a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his 
mother when I went in. I made him read on ; it 
was the description of a shipwreck. His passion 
rose with the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands. 
^ There's the mast gone,' says he ; * crash it goes ! 
— they will all perish!' After his agitation, he turns 
to me. * That is too melancholy,' says he; * I had 
better read you something more amusing.' I pre- 
ferred a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton 
and other books he was reading, which he gave me 
wonderfully. One of his observations was, * .How 
strange it is that Adam, just new come into the 
world, should know every thing — that must be the 
poet's fancy,' says he. But when he was told he was 
created perfect by God, he instantly yielded. When 
taken to bed last night, he told his aunt he liked that 
lady. * What lady?* says she. * Why, Mrs Cock- 
burn; for I think she is a virtuoso like myself/ 



120 LIFE OF SIR WAIiTEB SCOTT. 

* Dear Walter,' says aunt Jenny, * what is a virtuoso?* 
' Don't ye know ? Why, it's one who wishes and 
will know every thing.'* — Now, sir, you will think 
this a very silly story. Pray, what age do you sup- 
pose this boy to be? Name it now, before I tell 
you. Why, twelve or fourteen. No such thing; he 
is not quite six years old.t He Jias a lame leg, for 
which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the 
perfect English accent, which he has not lost since 
he came, and he reads like a Grarrick. You will al^ 
low this an uncommon exotic." 

Some particulars in Mrs Cockburn's account ap- 
pear considerably at variance with what Sir Walter 
has told us respecting his own boyish proficiency — 
especially in the article of pronunciation. On that 
last head, however, Mrs Cockburn was not, probably, 
a very accurate judge; all that can be said is, that if 

* It may amuse my reader to recall, by the side of Scott's 

early definition of '* a Virtuoso," the lines in which Akenside has 

painted that character — lines which might have been written for 

a description of the Author of Waverley : — 

** He knew the various modes of ancient times. 
Their arts and fashions of each rarious guise ; 
Their weddings, funerals, punishments of crimes ; 
Their strength, their learning eke, and rarities. 
Of old habiliment, each sort and size, 
Male, female, high and low, to him were known ; 
Each gladiator's dress, and stage disguise. 
With learned clerkly phrase he could have shown." 

f He was, in fact, six years and three months old before this 
letter was written. 



BAVELSTONE 1777. 121 

at this early period he had acquired anything which 
could be justly described as an English accent, he 
soon lost, and never again recovered, what he had 
thus gained from his short residence at Bath. In 
after life his pronunciation of words, considered se- 
parately, was seldom much different from that of a 
well-educated Englishman of his time; but he used 
many words in a sense which belonged to Scotland, 
not to England, and the tone and accent remained 
broadly Scotch, though, unless in the burr, which no 
doubt smacked of the country bordering on Nor- 
thumberland, there was no provincial peculiarity 
about his utterance. He had strong powers of mi- 
micry — could talk with a peasant quite in his own 
style, and frequently in general society introduced 
rustic patois, northern, southern, or midland, with 
great truth and effect; but these things were inlaid 
dramatically, or playfully, upon his narrative. His 
exquisite taste in this matter was not less remarkable 
in his conversation than in the prose of his Scotch 
novels. 

Another lady, nearly connected with the Keiths 
of Ravelstone, has a lively recollection of young 
Walter, when paying a visit much about the same 
period to his kind relation,* the mistress of that pic- 
turesque old mansion, which furnished him in after 

* Mrs Keith of Ravelstone was -born a Swinton of Swinton, and 
sister to Sir Walter's maternal grandmother. 



122 LIFB OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

days with many of the features of his TuUy-'Veolan, 
and whose venerable gardens, with their massive 
hedges of yew and holly, he always considered as 
the ideal of the art;. The lady, whose letter I have 
now before me, says she distinctly remembers the 
sickly boy sitting at the gate of the house with his 
attendant, when a poor mendicant approached, old 
and woe-begone, to claim the charity which none 
asked for in vain at Ravelstone. When the man 
was retiring, the servant remarked to Walter that he 
ought to be thankful to Providence for having placed 
him above the want and misery he had been contem* 
plating. The child looked up with a half wistful, 
half incredulous expression, and said, << Homer 
was a beggar!*^ " How do you know that?" said the 
other. " Why, don't you remember," answered the 
little Virtuoso, " that 

* Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead. 
Through which the living Homer begged his bread V " 

The lady smiled at the " Roman cities," — but already 

" Each blank in faithless memory void 
The poet's glowing thought supplied.*' 

It was in this same year, 1777, that he spent some 
time at Prestonpans; made his first acquaintance 
with George Constable, the original of his Monk- 
barns; explored the field where Colonel Gardiner 
received his death-wound, under the learned guid- 



S ANDY-KNOWB 1777- 1 23 

ance of Dalgetty ; and marked the spot " where the 
grass grew long and green, distinguishing it from 
the rest of the field," * above the grave of poor Bal- 
mawhapple. 

His uncle Thomas, whom I have described as I 
saw him in extreme old age at Monklaw, had the 
management of the farm afiairs at Sandy- Kno we, 
when Walter returned thither from Prestonpans ; he 
was a kindhearted man, and very fond of the child. 
Appearing on his return somewhat strengthened, his 
uncle promoted him from the Cow-bailie's shoulder 
to a dwarf of the Shetland race, not so large as many 
a Newfoundland dog. This creature walked freely 
into the house, and was regularly fed from the boy's 
hand. He soon learned to sit her well, and often 
alarmed aunt Jenny, by cantering over the rough 
places about the tower. In the evening of his life, 
when he had a grandchild afiBicted with an infirmity 
akin to his own, he provided him with a little mare 
of the same breed, and gave her the name of Marion, 
in memory of this early favourite. 

* Waverley, vol. ii. p. 175. 



124 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 



CHAPTER III. 

Illustrations of the Autobiography continued — High 
School of Edinburgh — Residence at Kelso, 

1778-1783. 



The report of Walter's progress in horsemanship 
probably reminded his father that it was time he 
should be learning other things beyond the depart- 
ment either of aunt Jenny or uncle Thomas^ and after 
a few months he was recalled to Edinburgh. But 
extraordinary as was the progress he had by this time 
made in that self-education which alone is of primary 
consequence to spirits of his order, he was found too 
deficient in lesser matters to be at once entered in 
the High School. Probably his mother dreaded, and 
deferred as long as she could, the day when he should 
be exposed to the rude collision of a crowd of boys. 
At all events he was placed first in a little private 
school kept by one Leechman in Bristo-Port; and 



EDINBUBGH HIGH SCHOOL. 125 

then, that experiment not answering expectation, 
under the domestic tutorage of Mr James French, 
afterwards minister of East Kilbride in Lanarkshire. 
This respectable man considered him fit to join Luke 
Fraser^s class in October 17Y8. 

His own account of his progress at this excellent 
seminary is, on the whole, very similar to what I have 
received from some of his surviving school-fellows. 
His quick apprehension and powerful memory en- 
abled him, at little cost of labour, to perform the 
usual routine of tasks, in such a manner as to keep 
him generally ^^ in a decent place'' (so he once ex- 
pressed it to Mr Skene) '^ about the middle of the 
class ; with which," he continued, " I was the better 
contented, that it chanced to be near the fire."* Mr 
Fraser was, I believe, more zealous in enforcing 
attention to the technicalities of grammar, than to 
excite curiosity about historical facts, or imagination 
to strain after the flights of a poet. There is no 
evidence that Scott, though he speaks of him as his 
" kind master," in remembrance probably of sympathy 
for his physical infirmities, ever attracted his special 
notice with reference to scholarship ; but Adam, the 

* According to Mr Irving^s recollectioos, Scott's place, aiiter 
the first winter, was usually between the 7th and the Idth from 
the top of the class. He adds, ** Dr James Buchan was always 
the dux ; David Douglas (Lord Reston) second i and the present 
Lord Melville third. 



126 UF£ OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

Rector, into whose class he passed in October 1782, 
was, s^s his situation demanded, a teacher of a more 
liberal caste ; and though never, even under his gui- 
dance, did Walter fix and concentrate his ambition 
so as to maintain an eminent place, still the vivacity 
of his talents was observed, and the readiness of his 
memory in particular was so often displayed, that (as 
Mr Irving, his chosen friend of that day, informs 
me) the Doctor " would constantly refer to him for 
dates, the particulars of battles, and other remarkable 
events alluded to in Horace, or whatever author the 
boys were reading, and used to call him the historian 
of the class." No one who has read, as few have not, 
Dr Adam's interesting work on Roman Antiquities, 
will doubt the author's capacity for stimulating such 
a mind as young Scott's. 

He speaks of 'himself as occasionally '< glancing 
like a meteor from the bottom to the top of the 
form." His school-fellow, Mr Claud Russell, re* 
members that he once made a great leap in conse* 
quence of the stupidity of some laggard on what is 
called the dulfa (dolt's) bench, who being asked, on 
boggling at ewm, " what part of speech is withf^ 
answered, " a svhstantive^ The Rector, after a mo- 
ment's pause, thought it worth while to ask his diuv 
— "Is with ever a substantive?" but all were silent 
until the query reached Scott, then near the bottom 
of the class, who instantly responded by quoting a 



EDINBURGH HIGH SCHOOL. 127 

verse of the book of Judges: — "And Samson, said 
unto Delilah, If they bind me with seven green mths 
that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and as 
another man."* Another upward movement, ac^ 
complished in a less laudable manner, but still one 
etrikingly illustrative of his ingenious resources, 
I am enabled to preserve through the kindness of 
a brother poet and esteemed friend, to whom Sir 
Walter himself communicated it in the melancholy 
twilight of his bright day. 

Mr Rogers says — " Sitting one day alone with 
him in your house, in the Regent's Park — (it was 
the day but one before he left it to embark at Ports- 
TuoUth for Malta) — I led him, among other things, 
to tell me once again a story of himself, which he 
had formerly told me, and which I had often wished 
to recover. When I returned home, I wrote it 
down, as nearly as I could, in his own words ; and 
here they are. The subject is an achievement worthy 
of Ulysses himself, and such as many of his school* 
fellows could, no doubt, have related of him ; but I 
fear I have done it no justice, though the story is so 
very characteristic that it should not be lost. The 
inimitable manner in which he told it — the glance 
of the eye, the turn of the head, and the light that 
, played over his faded features, as, one by one, the 

* Chap. xvi. verse 7. 



128 ULFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

circumstances came back to him, accompanied by a 
thousand boyish feelings, that had slept perhaps for 
years — there is no language, not even his own, could 
convey to you ; but you can supply them. Would 
that others could do so, who had not the good for- 
tune to know him! — The memorandum (Friday, 
October 21, 1831) is as follows:— 

"There was a boy in my class at school, who 
stood always at the top,* nor could I with all my 
efforts supplant him. Day came after day, and still 
he kept his place, do what I would ; till at length I 
observed that, when a question was asked him, he 
always fumbled with his fingers at a particular but- 
ton in the lower part of his waistcoat. To remove 
it, therefore, became expedient in my eyes ; and in 
an evil moment it was removed with a knife. Great 
was my anxiety to know t]f.e success of my measure ; 
and it succeeded too well. When the boy was again 
questioned, his fingers sought again for the button, 
but it was not to be found. In his distress he looked 
down for it ; it was to be seen no more than to be 
felt. He stood confounded, and I took possession 
of his place ; nor did he ever recover it, or ever, I 

* Mr Irving inclines to tliink that this incident must have oc* 
curred during Scott's attendance on Luke Fraser, not after he 
went to Dr Adam ;' and he also suspects that the boy referred to 
sat at the top, not of the class, but of Scott's own bench or divi- 
sion of the class. 



SDINBURGH HIGH SCHOOL. 129 

believe, suspect who was the author of his wrong. 
Often in after-life has the sight of him smote me as 
I passed by him ; and often have I resolved to make 
him some reparation; but it ended in good resolu- 
tions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance 
with him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior 
office in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh. 
Poor fellow! I believe he is dead; he took early to 
drinking." 

The autobiography tells us that his translations in 
verse from Horace and Virgil were often approved 
by Dr Adam. One of these little pieces, written in 
a weak boyish scrawl, within pencilled marks still 
visible, had been carefully preserved by his mother ; 
it was found folded up in a cover inscribed by the old 
lady— «% Walter's Jh-st Unesy 1782." 

** In awful ruins ^tna thunders nigb, 
And sends in pitchy wlurlwinds to the sky 
Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire, 
From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire ; 
At other times huge balls of fire are toss'd. 
That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost : 
Sometimes the mount, with vast conyulsions torn, 
Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne 
T^th loud explosions to the starry skies. 
The stones made liquid as the huge mass flies, 
Then back again with greater weight recoils, 
While ^tna thundering from the bottom boils/* 

VOL. I. I 



130 lilFE OP Sni WALTER SCOTT. 

I gather from Mr IrnD|^ that these lines were consi- 
dered as the second best set of tiiose produced on the 
occasion — Colin Mackenzie of Portmore, through 
life Scott's dear friend, carrying off the premium. 

In his Introduction to the " Lay," he alludes to an 
original effusion of these " schoolboy days," prompted 
by a thunder-storm, which he says " was much ap- 
proved of, until a malevolent critic sprung up in the 
shape of an apothecary's blue-buskined wife, who 
affirmed that my most sweet poetry was copied from 
an old magazine. I never " (he continues) " forgave 
the imputation, and even now I acknowledge some 
resentment against the poor woman's memory. She 
indeed accused me unjustly, when she said I had stolen 
my poem ready made ; but as I had, like most pre- 
mature poets, copied all the words and ideas of which 
my verses consisted, she was so far right. I made 
one or two faint attempts at verse after I had under- 
gone this sort of daw-plucking at the hands of the 
apothecary's wife, but some friend or other always 
advised me to put my verses into the fire ; and, like 
Dorax in the play, I submitted, though with a swell- 
ing heart." These lines, and another short piece 
" On the Setting Sun," were lately found wrapped up 
in a cover, inscribed by Dr Adam, " Walter Scott, 
July 1783," and have been kindly transmitted to me 
by the gentleman who discovered them. 



EDINBURGH HIGH SCHOOL. 131 

" ON A THUNDBft-STORM. 

'* Loud o*er my Kead though awfiil thunders roll. 
And vivid lightningB flash from pole to pole. 
Yet 'tis thy voice, my God, that bids them fly. 
Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky. 
Then let the good thy mighty name revere. 
And hardened sinners thy just vengeance fear.*' 

<< ON THK SETTINQ SUN. 

** Those evening clouds, that setting ray 
And beauteous tints, serve to display 

Their great Creator's praise ; 
Then let the short-lived thing call'd man, 
Whose life's comprised within a span. 

To Him his homage raise. 

** We often praise the evening clouds. 
And tints so gay and bold. 
But seldom think upon our God, 

Who tiuged these clouds with gold ! " * 

It must, I think, be allowed that these lines, though 
of the class to which the poet himself modestly ascribes 
them, and not to be compared with the efforts of Pope, 

* I am obliged for these little memorials to the Rev. W. Steven 
of Rotterdam, author of an interesting book on the history of the 
branch of -the Scotch Church long established in Holland, and 
still flourishing under the protection of the enlightened govern- 
ment of that country. Mr Steven found them in the course of 
his recent researches, undertaken with a view to some memoirs of 
the High School of Edinburgh, at which he had received his own 
early education. 



132 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

still less of Cowley at the same period, show, never- 
theless, praiseworthy dexterity for a boy of twelve. 

The fragment tells us, that on the whole he was 
" more distinguished in the Ya/rds (as the High School 
playground was called), than in the class T and this, 
not less than the intellectual advancement which years 
before had excited the admiration of Mrs Cockbum, 
was the natural result of his lifelong "rebellion against 
external circumstances." He might now with very 
slender exertion have been the dux of his form; but 
if there was more difficulty, there was also more to 
whet his ambition, in the attempt to overcome the 
disadvantages of his physical misfortune, and in spite 
of them assert equality with the best of his compeers 
on the ground which they considered as the true arena 
of honour. He told me, in walking through these 
same yards forty years afterwards, that he had scarcely 
made his first appearance there, before some dispute 
arising, his opponent remarked that " there was no 
use to hargle-bargle with a cripple f upon which he 
replied, that if he might fight mounted, he would try 
his hand with any one of his inches. "An elder boy,* 
said he, " who had perhaps been chuckling over our 
friend Roderick Random when his mother supposed 
him to be in full cry after Pyrrhus or Poms, sug- 
gested that the two little tinklers might be lashed 
front to front upon a deal board — and — * O gran 
bonta de* cavalier antichi' — the proposal being forth- 



EDINBURGH HIGH SCHOOL. 133 

with agreed to, I received my first bloody nose in ah 
attitude which would have entitled me, in the blessed 
days of personal cognizances, to assume that of a 
lioncel seiant gules. My pugilistic trophies here," 
he continued, '^ were all the results of such sittings 
in bemcoJ* Considering his utter ignorance of fear, 
the strength of his chest and upper limbs, and that 
the scientific part of pugilism never flourished in 
Scotland, I daresay these trophies were not few. 

The mettle of the High-School boys, however, was 
principally displayed elsewhere than in their own 
yards; and Sir Walter has furnished us with ample 
indications of the delight with which he found himself 
at length capable of rivalling others in such achieve* 
ments as required the exertion of active locomotive 
powers. Speaking of some scene of his infancy in 
one of his latest tales, he says — " Every step of the 
way after I have passed through the green already 
mentioned," (probably the Meadows behind George's 
Square), << has for me something of an early remem- 
brance. There is the stile at which I can recollect 
a cross child's-maid upbraiding me with my infirmity 
as she lifted me coarsely and carelessly over the flinty 
steps which my brothers traversed with shout and 
bound. I remember the suppressed bitterness of the 
moment, and conscious of my own infirmity, the envy 
with which I regarded the easy movements and elastic 
steps of my more happily formed brethren. Alas!" 



134 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

he adds, << these goodly barks have all perished in 
life's wide ocean, and only that which seemed, as the 
naval phrase goes, so little sea-worthy, has reached 
the port when the tempest is over." How touching 
to compare with this passage, that in which he re- 
cords his pride in being found before he left the High 
School one of the boldest and nimblest climbers of 
'< the kittle nine stanes," a passage of difficulty which 
might puzzle a chamois-hunter of the Alps, its steps 
" few and far between," projected high in air from 
the precipitous black granite of the Castle rock. But 
climbing uid fighting could sometimes be combined, 
and he has in almost the same page dwelt upon per- 
haps the most favourite of all these juvenile exploits 
— namely, " the manning of the Cowgate Port," — 
in the season when snowballs could be employed by 
the young scomers of discipline for the annoyance of 
the Town-guard. To imderstand fully the feelings of 
a High-School boy of that day with regard to those 
ancient Highlanders, who then formed the only police 
of the city of Edinburgh, the reader must consult 
the poetry of the scapegrace Ferguson. It was in 
defiance of their Lochaber axes that the Cowgate 
Port was manned — and many were the occasions on 
which its defence presented a formidable mimicry 
of warfare. " The gateway," Sir Walter adds, " is 
now demolished, and probably most of its garrison lie 
as low as the fortress! To recollect that I, however 



HIGH-SCHOOL GBEEN-BREEKS. 1 35 

naturally disqualified, was one of these juvenile dread- 
noughts, is a sad reflection for one who cannot now 
step oyer a brook without assistance." 

I am unwilling to swell this narratdve by extracts 
from Scott's published works, but ther^ is one juvenile 
exploit told in the General Preface to the Waverley 
Novels, which I must crave leave to introduce here 
in his own language, because it is essentially necessary 
to complete our notion of his schoolboy life and cha- 
racter. '*' It is well known," he says, '^ that there is 
little boxing at the Scottish schools. About forty or 
fifty years ago, however, a far more dangerous mode 
of fighting, in parties or factions, was permitted in 
the streets of Edinburgh, to the great disgrace of the 
police, and danger of the parties concerned. These 
parties were generally formed from the quarters of 
the town in which the combatants resided, those of a 
particular square or district fighting against those of 
an adjoining one. Hence it happened that the chil- 
dren of the higher classes were often pitted against 
those of the lower, each taking their side according 
to the residence of their friends. So far as I recollect, 
however, it was immingled either with feelings of 
democracy or aristocracy, or indeed with malice or 
ill-will of any kind towards the opposite party. In 
fact, it was only a rough mode of play. Such con- 
tests were, however, maintained with great vigour 
with stones, and sticks, and fisticuffs, when one party 



136 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

dared to charge, and the other stood their ground. 
Of course, mischief sometimes happened; boys are 
said to have been killed at these Bickers, as they 
were called, and serious accidents certainly took place, 
as many contemporaries can bear witness. 

" The author's father, residing in Greorge's Square, 
in the southern side of Edinburgh, the boys belonging 
to that family, with others in the square, were arranged 
into a sort of company, to which a lady of distinction 
presented a handsome set of colours.* Now, this com- 
pany or regiment, as a matter of course, was engaged 
in weekly warfare with the boys inhabiting the Cross- 
causeway, Bristo-Street, the Potterrow, — in short, 
the neighbouring suburbs. These last were chiefly 
of the lower rank, but hardy loons, who threw stones 
to a hair^s-breadth, and were very rugged antagonists 
at close quarters. The skirmish sometimes lasted for 
a whole eyening, until one party or the other was 
victorious, when, if ours were successful, we drove 
the enemy to their quarters, and were usually chased 
back by the reinforcement of bigger lads who came to 
their assistance. If, on the contrary, we were pursued, 
as was often the case, into the precincts of our square, 
we were in our turn supported by our elder brothers, 
domestic servant^ and similar auxiliaries. It fbl- 



* Thin young patroness was the present Duchess-Countess of 
Sutherland. 



GREEN-BBJBEKS. 137 

lowed, from our frequent opposition to each other^ 
that, though not knowing the names of our enemies, 
we were yet well acquainted with their appearance, 
and had nicknames for the most remarkable of them. 
One very active and spirited boy might be considered 
as the principal leader in the cohort of the suburbs. 
He was, I suppose, thirteen or fourteen years old, 
finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair, the 
very picture of a youthful Goth. This lad was 
always first in the charge, and last in the retreat — 
the Achilles at once and Ajax of the Crosscauseway. 
He was too formidable to us not to have a cognomen, 
and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from 
the most remarkable part of his dress, being a pair 
of old green livery breeches, which was the principal 
part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to 
Don Quixote's account, Green-breeks, as we called 
him, always entered the battle with bare arms, legs, 
and feet. 

<^ It fell, that once upon a time when the combat 
was at its thickest, this plebeian champion headed a 
charge so rapid and furious, that all fied before him. 
He was several paces before his comrades, and had 
actually laid his hands upon the patrician standard, 
when one of our party, whom some misjudging friend 
had entrusted with a couteau de chasse, or hanger, 
inspired with a zeal for the honour of the corps, 
worthy of Major Sturgeon himself, struck poor 



138 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Green-breeks over the head, with strength sufficient 
to cut him down. When this was seen, the casualty 
was so far beyond what had ever taken place before, 
that both parties fled different ways, leaidng poor 
Green-breeks, with his bright hair plentifully dabbled 
in blood, to the care of the watchman, who (honest 
man) took care not to know who had done the mis- 
chief. The bloody hanger was thrown into one of 
the Meadow ditches, and solemn secrecy was sworn 
on all hands; but the remorse and terror of the actor 
were beyond all bounds, and his apprehensions of the 
most dreadful character. The wounded hero was for 
a few days in the Infirmary, the case being only a 
trifling one. But though enquiry was strongly pressed 
on him, no argument could make him indicate the 
person from whom he had received the wound, though 
he must have been perfectly well known to him. 
When he recovered and was dismissed, the author 
and his brothers opened a communication with him, 
through the medium of a popular gingerbread baker, 
of whom both parties were customers, in order to 
tender a subsidy in the name of smart-money. The 
sum would excite ridicule were I to name it ; but 
sure lam, that the pockets of the noted Green-breeks 
never held as much money of his own. He declined 
the remittance, sa3ring that he would not sell his 
blood; but at the same time reprobated the idea of 
being an informer, which he said was clam, i. e. base 



GREEN-BREISKS. 139 

or mean. With much m'gency, he accepted a pound 
of snuff for the use of some old woman — aunt, grand- 
mother, or the like — with whom he lived. We did 
not become friends, for the bickers were more agree- 
able to both parties than any more pacific amusement ; 
but we conducted them ever after, under mutual as- 
surances of the highest consideration for each other." 
Sir Walter adds — " Of &Ye brothers, all healthy 
and promising in a degree far beyond one whose in- 
fancy was visited by personal infirmity, and whose 
health after this period seemed long very precarious, 
I am, nevertheless, the only survivor. The best 
loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had 
destined this, incident to be the foundation of a lite- 
rary composition, died << before his day," in a distant 
and foreign land; and trifles assume an importance 
not their own, when connected with those who have 
been loved and lost." 

During some part of his attendance on the High 
School, young Walter spent one hour daily at a small 
separate seminary of writing and arithmetic, kept by 
one Morton, where, as was, and I suppose continues 
to be, the custom of Edinburgh, young girls came for 
instruction as well as boys; and one of Mr Morton's 
female pupils has been kind enough to set down some 
little reminiscences of Scott, who happened to sit at 
the same desk with herself. They appear to me the 
more interesting, because the lady had no acquaint-^ 



140 LIFE OF Sm WALTER SCOTT. 

ance with him in the course of his subsequent life. 
Her nephew Mr James (the accomplished author of 
Richelieu), to whose friendship I owe her conmiuni- 
cation, assures me too, that he had constantly heard 
her tell the same things in the very same way, as far 
hack as his own memory reaches, many years before 
he had ever seen Sir Walter, or his aunt could have 
dreamt of surviying to assist in the biography of his 
early days. 

"He attracted," Mrs Churnside says, " the regard 
t^vd fondness of all his companions, for he was ever 
rational, fanciful, lively, and possessed of that urbane 
gentleness of manner, which makes its way to the 
heart. His imagination was constantly at work, and 
he often so engrossed the attention of those who learnt 
with him, that little could be done — Mr Morton 
himself being forced to laugh as much as the little 
scholars at the odd turns and devices he fell upon; 
for he did nothing in the ordinary way, but, for ex- 
ample, even when he wanted ink to his pen, would 
get up some ludicrous story about sending his doggie 
lO'thev piill again. He used also to interest us in a 
more serious way, by telling us the visions, as he 
called themj which he had lying alone on the floor or 
sofa, when kept, from going to church on a Sunday 
by ill health. Child as I was, I could not help being 
highly detighted with his description of the glories he 
had seen — his misty and sublime sketches of the re- 



MRS CHURNSIDE. 141 

gions above, which he had visited in his trance. Re- 
collecting these descriptions, taijiant and not gloomy 
as they were, I have often, thoiight'sinte, that there 
must have been a bias in his. mindip - superstition — 
the marvellous seemed to^ have such pb^'erdVef him, 
though the mere offspring of his own imagination, 
that the expression of his face, habitually that of 
genuine benevolence, mingled with a shrewd innocent 
humour, changed greatly while he was speaking of 
these things, and showed a deep intehseness of feel- 
ing, as if he were awed even by his own recital. . . . 
I may add, that in walking he used always to keep 
his eyes turned downwards as if thinking, but with a 
pleasing expression of cbuntenance, as if.ienjoying his 
thoughts. Having once knoi^ hito, it' was impossible 
ever to forget him. In- this manner, after a^- the 
changes of a long lif^, he cohstanldy appears as 'fresh 
as yesterday to my mind's eye.* - 

This beautiful extract needs no -comm^tary. I 
may as well, however, bearwitsEess; that exactly as 
the schoolboy still walks before " her mind's eye," 
his image rises familiarly to mine, who never saw him 
until he was past the middle of life: that I trace in 
every feature of her delineation, the same gentleness 
of aspect and demeanour which the presence of the 
female sex, whether in silk or in russet, ever com- 
manded in the man; and that her desccqption of the 
change on his countenance when passing from the 



142 MFE OF SIR WAI^TER SCOTT. 

<< doggie of the mill" to the dream of Paradise, is a 
perfect picture of what no one that has heard him 
recite a fragment of high poetry, in the course of 
tahle talk, can ever forget. Strangers may catch 
some notion of what fondly dwells on the memory 
of every friend, by glancing from the conversational 
bust of Chantrey, to the first portrait by Raeburn, 
which represents the Last Minstrel as musing in his 
prime within sight of Hermitage.* 

I believe it was about this time that, as he ex- 
presses it in one of his latest works, ^' the first images 
of horror from the scenes of real life were stamped 
upon his mind," by the tragical death of his great- 
aunt Mrs Margaret Swinton. This old lady, whose 
extraordinary nerve of character he illustrates largely 
in the introduction to the story of Aunt Margaret's 
Mirror, was now living with one female attendant, in 
a small house not far from Mr Scott's residence in 
George's Square. The maid-servant, in a sudden 
access of insanity, struck her mistress to death with 
a coal-axe, and then rushed furiously into the street 
with the bloody weapon in her hand, proclaiming 
aloud the horror she had perpetrated. I need not 
dwell on the effects which must have been produced 
in a virtuous and affectionate circle by this shocking 

* The Duke of Buccleuch, who now posseases this admirable 
portrait, has kindly permitted it to be re-engraved for the iUus- 
iration of these memoirs. 



BEY. JAMES MITCHELL. 143 

incident. The old lady had been tenderly attached 
to her nephew. " She was/' he says, " our constant 
resource in sickness, or when we tired of noisy play, 
and closed round her to listen to her tales." 

It was at this same period that Mr and Mrs Scott 
received into their house, as tutor for their children, 
Mr James Mitchell, of whom the Ashestiel Memoir 
gives us a description, such as I could not have 
presented had he been still alive. Mr Mitchell was 
living, however, at the time of his pupil's death, and 
I am now not only at liberty to present Scott's un- 
mutilated account of their intercourse, but enabled to 
give also the most simple and characteristic narrative 
of the other party. I am sure no one, however nearly 
related to Mr Mitchell, will now complain of seeing 
his keen-sighted pupil's sketch placed by the side, as 
it were, of the fuller portraiture drawn by the uncon- 
scious hand of the amiable and worthy man himself. 
The following is an extract from Mr Mitchell's MS., 
entitled " Memorials of the most remarkable occur- 
rences and transactions of my life, drawn up in the 
hope that, when I shall be no more, they may be read 
with profit and pleasure by my children." The good 
man was so kind as to copy out one chapter for my 
use, as soon as he heard of Sir Walter Scott's death. 
He was then, and had for many years been, minister 
of a Presbyterian chapel at Wooler, in Northumber- 
land, to which situation he had retired on losing his 



144 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

benefice at Montrose, in consequence of the Sabbata-^ 
rian scruples alluded to in Scotf s Autobiography. 

" In 1782," says Mr Mitchell, « I became a tutor 
in Mr Walter Scott's family. He was a Writer to 
the Signet in George's Square, Edinburgh. Mr Scott 
was a fine looking man, then a little past the meridian 
of life, of dignified, yet agreeable manners. His busi- 
ness was extensive. He was a man of tried integrity, 
of strict morals, and had a respect for religion and 
its ordinances. The church the family attended was 
the Old Greyfriars, of which the celebrated Doctors 
Robertson and Erskine were the ministers. Thither 
went Mr and Mrs Scott every Sabbath, when well 
and at home, attended by their fine young family of 
children, and their domestic servants — a sight so 
amiable and exemplary as often to excite in my breast 
a glow of heartfelt satisfaction. According to an 
established and laudable practice in the family, the 
heads of it, the children, and servants, were assem- 
bled on Sunday evenings in the drawing-room, and 
examined on the Church Catechism and sermons they 
had heard delivered during the course of the day; on 
which occasions I had to perform the part of chaplain, 
and conclude with prayer. From Mrs Scott I learned 
that Mr Scott was one that had not been seduced 
from the paths of virtue ; but had been enabled to 
venerate good morals from his youth. When he first 
came to Edinburgh to follow out his profession, somQ 



MR laTCHELL's REMINISCENCES. 145 

of his school -fellows, who, like him, had come to 
reside in Edinburgh, attempted to nnhinge his prin- 
ciples, and corrupt his morals; but when they found 
him resolute, and unshaken in his virtuous disposi- 
tions, they gave up the attempt; but, instead of aban- 
doning him altogether, thej thought the more of him, 
and iionoured him with their confidence and patron- 
age; which is certainly a great inducement to young 
men in the outset of life to act a similar part. 

<' After haying heard of his inflexible adherence 
to the cause of virtue in his youth) and his regular 
attendance on the ordinances of religion in after-life, 
we will not be surprised to be told that he bore a 
sacred regard for the Sabbath, nor at the following 
anecdote illustratiye of it. An opulent farmer of 
East Lothian had employed Mr Scott as his agent, 
in a cause depending before the Court of Session. 
Haying a curiosity to see something in the papers 
relative to the process, which were deposited in Mr 
Scott's hands, this worldly man came into Edinburgh 
on a Sunday to have an inspection of them. As there 
was no immediate necessity for this measure, Mr 
Scott asked the &rmer if an ordinary week-day would 
not answer equally well. The farmer was not willing 
to take this advice, but insisted on the production of 
his papers. Mr Scott them delivered them to him, 
saying, it was not his practice to engage in secular 
business on Sabbath, and that he would have no difQ* 

VOL. I. K 



146 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

culty in Edinburgh to find some of his profession 
who would have none of his scruples. No wonder 
such a man was confided in, and greatly honoured in 
his professional line. — All the poor services I did to 
his family were more than repaid by the comfort and 
honour I had by being in the family, the pecuniary 
remuneration I received, and particularly by his re- 
commendation of me, sometime afterwards, to the 
Magistrates and Town-Council of Montrose, when 
there was a vacancy, and this brought me on the 
carpet, which, as he said, was all he could do, as 
the settlement would ultimately hinge on a popular 
election. 

" Mrs Scott was a wife in every respect worthy 
of such a husband. Like her partner, she was then 
a little past the meridian of life, of a prepossessing 
appearance, amiable manners, of a cultivated under- 
standing, affectionate disposition, and fine taste. She 
was both able and disposed to soothe her husband's 
mind under the asperities of business, and to be a 
rich blessing to her numerous progeny. But what 
constituted her distinguishing ornament was, that she 
was sincerely religious. Some years previous to my 
entrance into the family, I understood from one of 
the servants she had been under deep religious con- 
cern about her soul's salvation, which had ultimately 
issued in a conviction of the truth of Christianity, 
and in the enjoyment of its divine consolations. She 



MB Mitchell's BEBaNiscsNCEs. 147 

liked Dr Erskine's sermons; but was not fond of 
the Principal's, however rational, eloquent, and well 
composed, and would, if other things had answered, 
have gone, when he preached, to have heard Dr Da- 
vidson. Mrs Scott was a descendant of Dr Daniel 
Rutherford, a professor in the Medical School of 
Edinburgh, and one of those eminent men, who, 
by learning and professional skill, brought it to the 
high pitch of celebrity to which it has attained. He 
was an excellent linguist, and, according to the cus- 
tom of the times, delivered his prelections to the 
students in Latin. Mrs Scott told me, that, when 
prescribing to his patients, it was his custom to offer 
up at the same time a prayer for the accompanying 
blessing of heaven; a laudable practice, in which, 
I fear, he has not been generally imitated by those 
of his profession. 

" Mr Scott's family consisted of six children, all 
of which were at home except the eldest, who was an 
oflficer in the army; and as they were of an age fit for 
instruction, they were all committed to my superin- 
tendence, which, in dependence on God, I exercised 
with an earnest and faithful regard to their temporal 
and spiritual good. As the most of them were under 
public teachers, the duty assigned me was mainly to 
assist them in the prosecution of their studies. In 
all the excellencies, whether as to temper, conduct, 
talents natural or acquired, which any of the children 



148 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

individually possessed, to Master Walter, since tiie 
celebrated Sir Walter, must a decided preference be 
ascribed. Though, like the rest of the children, 
placed under my tuition, the conducting of his educa- 
tion comparatively cost me but little trouble, being, 
by the quickness of his intellect, tenacity of memory, 
and diligent application to his studies, generally equal 
of himself to the acquisition of those tasks I or others 
prescribed to him. So that Master Walter might be 
regarded not so much as a pupil of mine, but as a 
friend and companion, and I may add, as an assistant 
also; for, by his example and admonitions, he greatly 
strengthened my hands, and stimulated my other pupils 
to industry and good behaviour. I seldom had occa- 
sion all the time I was in the family to find fault with 
him even for trifles, and only once to threaten serious 
castigation, of which he was no sooner aware than he 
suddenly sprung up, threw his arms about my neck, 
and kissed me. It is hardly needful to state, that now 
the intended castigation was no longer thought of. 
By such generous and noble conduct, my displeasure 
was in a moment converted into esteem and admi- 
ration; my soul melted into tenderness, and I was 
ready to mingle my tears with his. Some incidents in 
reference to him in that early period, and some inte- 
resting and useful conversations I had with him, then 
deeply impressed on my mind, and which the lapse 
of near half a century has not yet obliterated, afforded 



MR Mitchell's beminiscences. 149 

no doubtful presage of his fature greatness and cele- 
brity. On my going into the family, as far as I can 
judge, he might be in his twelfth or thirteenth year, 
a boy in the Rector's class. However elevated above 
the other boys in genius, though generally in the list 
of the duxes, he was seldom, as far as I recollect, the 
leader of the school: nor need this be deemed sur- 
prising, as it has often been observed, that boys of 
original genius have been outstripped, by those that 
were far inferior to themselves, in the acquisition of 
the dead languages. Dr Adam, the rector, cele- 
brated for his knowledge of the Latin language, was 
deservedly held by Mr Walter in high admiration 
and regard; of which the following anecdote may be 
adduced as a proof. In the High School, as is well 
known, there are four masters and a rector. The 
classes of those masters the rector in rotation inspects* 
and in the mean time the master, whose school is 
examined, goes in to take care of the rector's. One 
of the masters, on account of some grudge, had 
rudely assaulted and injured the venerable rector one 
night in the High School Wynd. The rector's scho- 
lars, exasperated at the outrage, at the instigation 
of Master Walter, determined on revenge, and which 
was to be executed when this obnoxious master should 
again come to teach the class. When this occurred^ 
the task the class had prescribed to them was that 
passage in the ^neid of Virgil, where the Queen of 



150 JLIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

Carthage interrogates the court as to the stranger 
that had come to her habitation — 

' Quia novus hie hospes successit sedibus nostris?'* 

Master Walter having taken a piece of paper, in- 
scribed upon it these words, substituting vanus for 
novus, and pinned it to the tail of the master's coat, 
and turned him into ridicule by raising the laugh of 
the whole school against him. Though this juvenile 
action could not be justified on the footing of Chris- 
tian principles, yet certainly it was so far honourable 
that it was not a dictate of personal revenge, but 
that it originated in respect for a worthy and injured 
man, and detestation of one whom he looked upon as 
a bad character. 

'^ One forenoon, on coming from the High School, 
he said he wished to know my opinion as to his 
conduct in a matter he should state to me. When 
passing through the High School Yards, he found a 
half-guinea piece on the ground. Instead of appro- 
priating this to his own use, a sense of honesty led 
him to look around, and on doing so he espied a 
countryman, whom he suspected to be the proprietor. 

* This transposition of hospes and nostris sufficiently confirms 
his pupil's statement that Mr Mitchell " superintended his classi- 
cal themes, but not daasicallj.** The *' obnoxious master*' alluded 
to was Burns's friend Nicoll, the hero of the song — 

" Willie brewed a peck o* maut. 
And Rob and Allan came to see," &c. 



MR Mitchell's keminiscences. 15 J 

Having asked the man if he had lost any thing, he 
searched his pockets, and then replied that he had 
lost half -a- guinea. Master Walter with pleasure 
presented him with his lost treasure. In this trans- 
action, his ingenuity in finding out the proper owner, 
and his integrity in restoring the property, met my 
most cordial approbation. 

" When in church, Master Walter had more of a 
soporific tendency than the rest of my young charge. 
This seemed to be constitutional. He needed one or 
other of .the family to arouse him, and from this it 
might be inferred that he would cut a poor figure on 
the Sabbath evening when examined about the ser- 
mons. But what excited the admiration of the family 
was, that none of the children, however wakeful, 
could answer as he did. The only way that I could 
account for this was, that when he heard the text, 
and divisions of the subject, his good sense, memory, 
and genius, supplied the thoughts which woiuld occur 
to the preacher. 

<^ On one occasion, in the dining room, when, 
according to custom, he was reading some author in 
the time of relaxation from study, I asked him how 
he accounted for the superiority of knowledge he 
possessed above the rest of the family. His reply 
was — Some years ago he had been attacked by a 
swelling in one of his ankles, which confined him to 
the house, and prevented him taking amusement and 



152 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

exercise, and which was che cause of his lameness »« 
as under this ailment he could not romp with his 
brothers and the other young people in the green in 
George's Square, he found himself compelled to have 
recourse to some substitute for the juvenile amuse- 
ments of his comrades, and this was reading. So that, 
to what he no doubt accounted a painful dispensation 
of Providence, he probably stood indebted for his 
future celebrity. When it was understood I was to 
leave the family, Master Walter told me that he had 
a sniall present to give me to be kept as a memoran- 
dum of his friendship, and that it was of little value: 
* But you know, Mr Mitchell,' said he, * that pre- 
sents are not to be estimated according to their in- 
trinsic value, but according to the intention of the 
donor.' This was his Adam's Grammar, which had 
seen hard service in its day, and had many animals 
and inscriptions on its margins. This, to my regret, 
is no longer to be found in my collection of books, 
nor do I know what has become of it. 

" Since leaving the family, although no stranger 
to the widely spreading fame of Sir Walter, I have 
had few opportunities of personal intercourse with 
him. When minister in the second charge of the 
Established Church at Montrose, he paid me a visit, 
and spent a night with me — few visits have been 
more gratifying. He was then on his return from 
Aberdeen, where he, as an advocate, had attended 



MR Mitchell's reminiscences. 153 

the Court of Justiciary in its northern circuit. Nor 
was his attendance in this court his sole object; an- 
other, and perhaps the principal, was, as he stated to 
me, to collect in his excursion ancient ballads and 
traditional stories about fairies, witches, and ghosts. 
Such intelligence proved to me as an electrical shock; 
and as I then sincerely regretted, so do I still, that 
Sir Walter's precious time was so much devoted to 
the dtdce, rather than the utUe of composition, and 
that his great talent should have been wasted on 
such subjects. At the same time I feel happy to 
qualify this censure, as I am generally given to un- 
derstand that his Novels are of a more pure and 
unexceptionable nature than characterizes writings of 
a similar description ; while at the same time his pen 
has been occupied in the production of works of a 
better and nobler order. Impressed with the con- 
viction that he would one day arrive at honour and 
influence in his native country, I endeavoured to 
improve the occasion of his visit to secure his pa- 
tronage in behalf of the strict and evangelical party 
in the Church of Scotland, in exerting himself to in- 
duce patrons to grant to the Christian people liberty 
to elect their own pastors in cases of vacancy. His 
answer struck me much: it was — * Nay, nay, Mr 
Mitchell, I'll not do that ; for if that were to be done, 
I and the like of me would have no life with such as 
you;' from which I inferred he thought that, were 



154 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the evangelical clergy to obtain the superiority, they 
would introduce such strictness of discipline as would 
not quadrate with the ideas of that party called the 
moderate in the Church of Scotland, whose views, I 
presume, Sir Walter had now adopted. Some, how- 
ever, to whom I have mentioned Sir Walter's reply, 
have suggested that I had misunderstood his mean- 
ing, and that what he said was not in earnest, but in 
jocularity and good-humour. This may be true, and 
certainly is a candid interpretation. As to the ideal 
beings already mentioned as the subject of his en- 
quiries, my materials were too scanty to afford him 
much information." 

Notwithstanding the rigidly Presbyterian habits 
which this chronicle describes with so much more 
satisfaction than the corresponding page in the Ashe- 
stiel Memoir, I am reminded, by a communication 
already quoted from a lady of the Ravelstone family, 
that Mrs Scott, who had, she says, *^ a turn for lite- 
rature quite uncommon among the ladies of the time,'' 
encouraged her son in his passion for Shakspeare i 
that his plays, and the Arabian Nights, were often 
read aloud in the family circle by Walter, "and 
served to spend many a happy evening hour ;" nay, 
that, however good Mitchell may have frowned at 
such a suggestion, even Mr Scott made little objec- 
tion to his children, and some of their young friends, 



KELSO THE GARDEN. 155 

getting* up private theatricals occasionally in the 
dining-room, after the lessons of the day were over. 
The lady adds, that Walter was always the manager, 
and had the whole chaise of the affair, and that the 
favourite piece used to he Jane Shore, in which he 
was the Hastings, his sister the Alicia. I have heard 
from another friend of the family, that Richard III. 
also was attempted, and that Walter took the part of 
the Duke of Gloucester, observing that " the limp 
would do well enough to represent the hump." 

A story which I have seen in print, about his 
partaking in the dancing lessons of his brothers, I 
do not believe. But it was during Mr Mitchell's 
residence in the family that they all made their un- 
successful attempts in the art of music, under the 
auspices of poor AUister Campbell — the Editor of 
"Albyn's Anthology." 

Mr Mitchell appears to have terminated his super- 
intendence before Walter left Dr Adam, and in the 
interval between this and his entrance at College, he 
spent some time with his aunt, who now inhabited a 
cottage at Kelso ; but the Memoir, I suspect, gives 
too much extension to that residence — which may 
be accounted for by his blending with it a similar 
visit which he paid to the same place during his 
College vacation of the next year. 

Some of the features of Miss Jenn/s abode at 
Kelso are alluded to in the Memoir, but the fullest 



156 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

description of it occurs in his ^' Essay on Landscape 
Gardening" (1828), where, talking of grounds laid 
out in the Dutch taste^ he says: — " Their rarity 
now entitles them to some care as a species of an- 
tiques, and unquestionably they give character to 
some snug, quiet, and sequestered situations, which 
would otherwise have no marked feature of any kind. 
I retain an early and pleasing recollection of the 
seclusion of such a scene. A small cottage, adjacent 
to a beautiful Tillage, the habitation of an ancient 
maiden lady, was for some time my abode. It was 
situated in a garden of seven or eight acres, planted 
about the beginning of the eighteenth century, by 
one of the Millars, related to the author of the 
" Gardenejs' Dictionary," or, for aught I know, by 
himself. It was full of long straight walks, between 
hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose tall and 
close on every side, l&ere were thickets of flowery 
shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which access was 
obtained through a little maze of contorted walks 
calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower 
was a splendid Platanus, or Oriental plane — a huge 
hill of leaves — one of the noblest specimens of that 
regxdarly beautiful tree which I remember to have 
seen. In different parts of the garden were flne 
ornamental trees, which had attained great size, and 
the orchard was filled with fruit trees of tbe best 
description., ^here were seats and hilly walk^ and 



KELSO JAMES BAXLANTYNE. 1 57 

a banqueting house. I visited this scene lately, after 
an absence of many years. Its air of retreat, the 
seclusion which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone; 
the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in 
the beginning of this century ; the hedges were cut 
down, the trees stubbed up, and the whole character 
6f the place so destroyed, that I was glad when I 
could leave it." It was under this Platanus that 
Scott first devoured Percy's Reliques. I remember 
well being with him,- in 1820 or 1821, when he re- 
visited the favourite scene, and the sadness of his 
looks when he discovered that "the huge hill of 
leaves" was no more. 

To keep up his scholarship while inhabiting the 
ga/rden, he attended daily, as he informs us, the 
public school of Kelso, and here he made his first 
acquaintance with a family, two members of which 
were intimately connected with the most important 
literary transactions of his after life — > James Ballan- 
tyne, the printer of almost all his works, and his 
brother John, who had a share in the publication of 
many of them. Their father was a respectable trades- 
man in this pretty town. The elder of the brothers, 
who did not long survive his illustrious friend, was 
kind enough to make an exertion on behalf of this 
work, while stretched on the bed from which he never 
rose, and dictated a valuable paper of memorandoy 
from which I shall here introduce mv first extract:— 



1 58 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

'^ I think," says James Ballantyne, '^ it was in 
the year 1783 that I £rst hecame acquainted with 
Sir Walter Scott, then a boy about my own age, at 
the Grammar School of Kelso, of which Mr Lan- 
celot Whale was the Rector. The impression left 
by his manners was, even at that early period, cal- 
culated to be deep, and I cannot recall any other 
instance in which the man and the boy continued 
to resemble each other so much and so long. Wal- 
ter Scott was not a constant* schoolfellow at this 
seminary; he only attended it for a few weeks 
during the -vacation of* the Edinburgh High School. 
He was then, as he continued during all his after 
life to be, devoted to antiquarian lore, and was cer- 
tainly the best story-teller I had ever heard, either 
then or since. He soon discovered that I was as 
fond of listening as he himself was of relating ; and 
I remember it was a thing of daily occurrence, that 
after he had made himself master of his own lesson, 
I, alas ! being still sadly to seek in mine, he used to 
whisper to me, * Come, slink over beside me, Jamie, 
and Fll tell you a story.' I well recollect that he 
had a form, or seat, appropriated to himself, the 
particular reason of which I cannot tell, but he was 
always treated with a peculiar degree of respect, not 
by the boys of the diflferent classes merely, but by 
the venerable Master Lancelot himself, who, an 
absent, grotesque being, betwixt six and seven feet 



KELSO JAMES BALLANTYNE. 159 

high, was nevertheless an admirable scholar, and 
sure to be delighted to find any one so well qua- 
lified to sympathize with him as young Walter 
Scott; and the affectionate gratitude of the young 
pupil was never intermitted, so long as his vene- 
rable master continued to live. I may mention, in 
passing, that old Whale bore, in many particulars, 
a strong resemblance to Dominie Sampson, though, 
it must be admitted, combining more gentlemanly 
manners with equal classical lore, and, on the whole, 
being a much superior sort of person. In the in- 
tervals of school hours, it was our constant practice 
to walk together by the banks of the Tweed, our 
employment continuing exactly the same, for his 
stories seemed to be quite inexhaustible. This in- 
tercourse continued during the summers of the years 
17 83-4, but was broken off in 1785-6, when I went 
into Edinburgh to College." 

Perhaps the separate seat assigned to Walter 
Scott, by the Kelso schoolmaster, was considered 
due to him as a temporary visiter from the great 
Edinburgh seminary. Very possibly, however, the 
worthy Mr Whale thought of nothing but protect- 
ing his solitary student of Persius and Tacitus from 
the chances of being jostled among the adherents of 
Ruddiman and Cornelius Nepos. 

Another of his Kelso schoolfellows was Robert 
Waldie (son of Mr Waldie of Henderside), and to 



160 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

this connexion he owed, hoth while quartered in the 
Grarden, and afterwards at Rosebank, many kind 
attentions, of which he ey&r preseryed a grateful 
recollection, and which haye left strong traces on 
every page of his works in which he has occasion 
to introduce the Society of Friends. This young 
companion's mother, though always called in the 
neighbourhood '^ Lady Waldie," belonged to that 
community ; and the style of life and manners de- 
picted in the household of Joshua Geddes of Mount 
Sharon and his amiable sister, in some of the sweetest 
chapters of Redgauntlet, is a slightly decorated edi- 
tion of what he witnessed under her hospitable roof. 
He records, in a note to the Novel, the '^ liberality 
and benevolence" of this " kind old lady" in allowing 
him to '' rummage at pleasure, and carry home any 
volumes he chose of her small but valuable library;" 
annexing only the condition that he should *' take 
at the same time some of the tracts printed for en- 
couraging and extending the doctrines of her own 
sect — She did not," he adds, " even exact any 
assurance that I would read these performances, 
being too justly afraid of involving me in a breach 
of promise, but was merely desirous that I should 
have the chance of instruction within my reach, in 
case whim, curiosity, or accident, might induce me 
to have recourse to it." I remember the pleasure 
with which he read^ late in life, << Rome in the 



KELSO 1783. 161 

Nineteenth Century," an ingenious work produced 
by one of Mrs Waldie's grandaughters, and how 
comically he pictured the alarm with which his 
ancient friend would have perused some of its de- 
lineations of the high places of Popery. 

I shall be pardoned for adding a marginal note 
written, apparently late in Scott's life, on his copy 
of a little forgotten volume, entitled Trifles in 
Verse, by a Young Soldier. " In 1783," he says, 
" or about that time, I remember John Marjori- 
banks, a smart recruiting officer in the Tillage of 
Kelso, the Weekly Chronicle of which he filled 
with his love verses. His Delia was a Miss Dick- 
son, daughter of a shopkeeper in the same village 
•—'his Gloriana a certain prudish old maiden lady, 
benempt Miss Goldie ; I think I see her still, with 
her thin arms sheathed in scarlet gloves, and crossed 
like two lobsters in a fishmonger's stand. Poor 
Delia was a very beautiful girl, and not more con- 
ceited than a be-rhymed miss ought to be. Many 
years afterwards I found the Kelso belle, thin and 
pale, her good looks gone, and her smart dress ne- 
glected, governess to the brats of a Paisley manu- 
facturer. I ought to say there was not an atom of 
scandal in her flirtation with the young military 
poet# The bard's fate was not much better ; after 
some service in India, and elsewhere, he led a half- 

VOL. I. L 



162 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

pay life about Edinburgh, and died there. There 
is a tenuity of thought in what he has written, but 
his verses are usually easy, and I like them because 
they recall my schoolboy days, when I thought him 
a Horace, and his Delia a goddess." 



EDINBURGH COLLEQE. 163 



CHAPTER IV. 

Illustrations of the Autohiographtf continued >--» 
Anecdotes of Scotfs College Life, 

1783-1786. 



On returning to Edinburgh, and entering the CoU 
lege, in November, 1783, Scott found himself once 
more in the fellowship of all his intimates of the 
High School; of whom, besides those mentioned 
in the autobiographical fragment, he speaks in his 
diaries with particular afifection of Sir William Rae, 
Bart., David Mon3q)enny (afterwards Lord Pitmilly), 
Thomas Tod, W. S., Sir Archibald Campbell of Sue- 
coth, Bart., all familiar friends of his through man-^ 
hood, — and the Earl of Dalhousie,* whom, onmeet-^ 
ing with him after a long separation in the evening^ 

* G«orge, ninth Earl of Dalhousie, highly distinguished in the 
niiliury annals of his time* died on the 2l8t March 1838) in Us 
68th yean 



164 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of life, he records as still being, and having always 
been, ^^ the same manly and generous character that 
all about him loved as the Lor die Ramsay of the 
Yards." The chosen companion, however, continued 
to be for some time Mr John Irving — his suburban 
walks with whom have been recollected so tenderly, 
both in the Memoir of 1 808, and in the Preface to 
Waverley of 1829. It will interest the reader to 
compare with those beautiful descriptions, the fol- 
lowing extract from a letter with which Mr Irving 
has favoured me : — 

" Every Saturday, and more frequently during the 
vacations, we used to retire, with three or four books 
from the circulating library, to Salisbury Crags, Ar- 
thur's Seat, or Blackford Hill, and read them toge- 
ther. He read faster than I, and had, on this account, 
to wait a little at finishing every two pages, before 
turning the leaf. The books we most delighted in 
were romances of knight-errantry; the Castle of 
Otranto, Spenser, Ariosto, and Boiardo were great 
favourites. We used to climb up the rocks in search 
of places where we might sit sheltered from the 
wind; and the more inaccessible they were, the bet- 
ter we liked them. He was very expert at climbing. 
Sometimes we got into places where we found it dif- 
ficult to move either up or down, and I recollect it 
being proposed, on several occasions, that I should 
go for a ladder to see and extricate him ; but I never 



MB irving's reminiscences. 165 

had any need really to do so, for he always managed 
somehow either to get down or ascend to the top. 
The number of books we thus devoured was very 
great. I forgot great part of what I read; but my 
friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, 
remained, to my surprise, master of it all, and could 
even weeks or months afterwards repeat a whole 
page in which any thing had particularly struck him 
at the moment. After we had continued this practice 
of reading for two years or more together, he pro- 
posed that we should recite to each other alternately 
such adventures of knight-errants as we could our- 
selves contrive; and we continued to do so a long 
while. He found no difficulty in it, and used to re- 
cite for half an hour or more at a time, while I sel- 
dom continued half that space. The stories we told 
were, as Sir Walter has said, interminable — for we 
were unwilling to have any of our favourite knights 
killed. Our passion for romance led us to learn 
Italian together ; after a time we could both read it 
with fluency, and we then copied such tales as we 
had met with in that language, being a continued suc- 
cession of battles and enchantments. He began early 
to collect old ballads, and as my mother could repeat 
a great many, he used to come and learn those she 
could recite to him. He used to get all the copies of 
these ballads he could, and select the best." 

These, no doubt, were among the germs of the col- 



166 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

lection of ballads in six little volumes, which, from 
the handwriting, had been begun at this early period, 
and which is still preserved at Abbotsford. And it 
appears, that at least as early a date must be ascribed 
to another collection of little humorous stories in 
prose, the Penny Chap^booksy as they are called, 
still in high favour among the lower classes in Scot- 
land, which stands on the same shelf. In a letter of 
1830* he states that he had bound up things of this 
kind to the extent of several volumes, before he was 
ten years old. 

Although the Ashestiel Memoir mentions so very 
lightly his boyish addiction to verse, and the rebuke 
which his vein received from the Apothecary's blue- 
buskined wife as having been followed by similar 
treatment on the part of others, I am inclined to be- 
lieve that while thus devouring, along with his young 
friend, the stories of Italian romance, he essayed, 
from time to time, to weave some of their materials 
into rhyme ; — nay, that he must have made at least 
one rather serious effort of this kind, as early as the 
date of these rambles to the Salisbury Crags. I have 
found among his mother's papers a copy of verses 
headed, ^^ Lines to Mr Walter Scott — on reading 
his poem ofGuiscard and Matilda^ inscribed to Miss 
Keith of Ravelston'* There is no date ; but I con- 
ceive the lines bear internal evidence of having been 
* Se« Strang's Gennany in 1831, vol. i. p. 265, 



" LINES *rO MR W. SCOTT." 1 67 

written when he was very young — not, I should 
suppose, above fourteen or fifteen at most. I think 
it also certain that the writer was a woman ; and 
have almost as little doubt that they came from the 
pen of his old admirer, Mrs Cockburn. They are as 
follows: — 

'' If such the accents of thy early youth 
When playful fancy holds the'place of truth ; 
If so divinely sweet thy numhers flow, 
And thy young heart melts with such tender wo ; 
What praise, what admiration shall he thine, 
When sense mature with science shall combine 
To raise thy genius, and thy taste refine ! 

** Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue 
Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you ; 
Go, bid the seeds her hand hath sown arise, 
By timely culture, to their native skies ; 
Go, and employ the poet*s heavenly art, 
Not merely to delight, but mend the heart. 
Than other poets happier mayst thou prove. 
More blest in friendship, fortunate in love. 
Whilst Fame, who longs to make true merit known. 
Impatient waits, to claim thee as her own. 

** Scorning the yoke of prejudice and pride. 
Thy tender mind let truth and reason guide ; 
Let meek humility thy steps attend, 
And firm integrity, youth's surest friend. 
So peace and honour all thy hours shall bless. 
And conscious rectitude each joy increase ; 
A nobler meed be thine than empty praise —~ 
Heaven shall approve thy life, and Keith thy lays.*' 



1 68 LIFE OP SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

At the period to which I refer these verses, Scott*s 
parents still continued to have some expectations of 
curing his lameness, and Mr Irving remembers to 
have often assisted in applying the electrical appara- 
tus, on which for a considerable time they principally 
rested their hopes. There is an allusion to these 
experiments in Scott's autobiographical fragment, but 
I have found a fuller notice on the margin of his 
copy of the "Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches, and 
Longevity," as Captain Grose chose to entitle an 
amusing collection of quack advertisements. 

" The celebrated Dr Graham," says the annota- 
tor, " was an empiric of some genius and great as* 
surance. In fact, he had a dash of madness in his 
composition. He had a fine electrical apparatus, and 
used it with skill. I myself, amongst others, was 
subjected to a course of electricity under his charge. 
I remember seeing the old Earl of Hopetoun seated 
in a large arm-chair, and hung round with a collar, 
and a belt of magnets, like an Indian chief. After 
this, growing quite wild, Graham set up his Temple 
of Health, and lectured on the Celestial Bed, He 
attempted a course of these lectures at Edinburgh, 
and as the Magistrates refused to let him do so, he 
libelled them in a series of advertisements, the flights 
of which were infinitely more absurd and exalted than 
those which Grose has collected. In one tirade (long 
in my possession), he declared that ' he looked down 



DR GRAHAM, 169 

Upon them' (the Magistrates) * as the sun in his me- 
ridian glory looks down on the poor, feeble, stinking 
glimmer of an expiring farthing candle, or as G — 
himself, in the plenitude of his omnipotence, may re- 
gard the insolent bouncings of a few refractory mag- 
gots in a rotten cheese.' Graham was a good-looking 
man; he used to come to the Grey friars' Church in 
a suit of white and silver, with a chapeau-bras, and 
his hair marvellously dressed into a sort of double 
toupee, which divided upon his head like the two 
tops of Parnassus. Mrs Macaulay, the historianess, 
married his brother. Lady Hamilton is said to have 
first enacted his Goddess of Health, being at this time 
a fille de joie of great celebrity.* The Temple of 
Health dwindled into a sort of obscene hell^ or 
gambling house. In a quarrel which took place 
there, a poor young man was run into the bowels 
with a red-hot poker, of which injury he died. The 
mob vented their fury on the house, and the Magis- 
trates, somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. 
A quantity of glass and crystal trumpery, the re- 
mains of the splendid apparatus, was sold on the 
South Bridge for next to nothing. Graham's next 
receipt was the earth-hath^ with which he wrought 
some cures, but that also failing, he was, I believe, 
literally starved to death." 

* Lord Nelson's connexion with this lady will preserve her ce- 
lebrity. In ** Kay's Edinburgh Portraits '* the reader will find 
more about Dr Graham. 



170 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Graham's earth-bath too was, I understand, tried 
upon Scott, but his was not one of the cases, if any 
such there were, in which it worked a cure. He, 
however, improved about this time greatly in his 
general health and strength, and Mr Irving, in ac- 
cordance with the statement in the Memoir, assures 
me, that while attending the early classes at the Col- 
lege, the young friends extended their walks, so as 
to visit in succession all the old castles within eight 
or ten miles of Edinburgh. " Sir Walter," he says, 
" was specially fond of Rosslyn. We frequently 
walked thither before breakfast — after breakfasting 
there, walked all down the river side to Lasswade — 
and thence home to town before dinner. He used 
generally to rest one hand upon my shoulder when 
we walked together, and leaned with the other on a 
stout stick." 

The love of picturesque scenery, and especially of 
feudal castles, with which the vicinity of Edinburgh 
is plentifully garnished, awoke, as the Memoir tells 
us, the desire of being able to use the pencil. Mr 
Irving says — "I attended one summer a class of 
drawing along with him, but although both fond of 
it, we found it took up so much time that we gave 
this up before we had made much progress." In 
one of his later diaries, Scott himself gives the fol- 
lowing more particular account of this matter : — 

" I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a 
little Jew animalcule — a smouch called Burrell — 



BUBBELL WALKEB. 1 7 1 

a clever sensible creature though. But I could 
make no progress either in painting or drawing. 
Nature denied me the correctness of eye and neat- 
ness of hand. Yet I was very desirous to be a 
draughtsman at least — and laboured harder to at- 
tain that point than at any other in my recollection 
to which I did not make some approaches. Burrell 
was not useless to me altogether neither. He was 
a Prussian, and I got from him many a long story 
of the battles of Frederick, in whose armies his fa- 
ther had been a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I 
remember his picturesque account of seeing a party 
of the blfick hussars bringing in some forage carts 
which they had taken from a body of the Cossacks, 
whom he described as lying on the top of the carts 
of hay mortally wounded, and like the dying gla- 
diator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through 
the straw." 

A year or two later, Scott renewed his attempt. 
" I afterwards,** he says, "took lessons from Walker, 
whom we used to call Blue Beard. He was one of 
the most conceited persons in the world, but a good 
teacher; one of the ugliest countenances he had 
that need be exhibited — enough, as we say, to spean 
weans. The man was always extremely precise in 
the quality of every thing about him ; his dress, ac- 
commodations, and every thing else. He became 
insolvent, poor man, and, for some reason or other, I 



172 LirjE OF SIB WAl.TER SCOTT. 

attended the meeting of those concerned in his affairs. 
Instead of ordinary accommodations for writing, each 
of the persons present was equipped with a large 
sheet of drawing-paper, and a swan's quill. It was 
mournfully ridiculous enough. Skirving made an 
admirable likeness of Walker ; not a single scar or 
mark of the smallpox, which seamed his counter 
nance, but the too accurate brother of the brush 
had faithfully laid it down in longitude and latitude. 
Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons) rather 
than let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the 
sale of his effects. I did learn myself to take some 
vile views from nature. When Will Clerk and I 
lived very much together, I used sometimes to make 
them under his instruction. He to whom, as to all 
his family, art is a familiar attribute, wondered at 
me as a Newfoundland dog would at a greyhound 
which showed fear of the water." 

Notwithstanding all that Scott says about the total 
failure of his attempts in the art of the pencil, I 
presume few will doubt that they proved very useful 
to him afterwards ; from them it is natural to sup^ 
pose he caught the habit of analyzing, with some 
approach at least to accuracy, the scenes over which 
his eye might have continued to wander with the 
vague sense of delight. I may add that a longer 
and more successful practice of the crayon might, 
I cannot but think, have proved the reverse of ser 



LESSONS IN DRAWING. 173 

Ticeable to him as a future painter with the pen. He 
might have contracted the habit of copying from pic- 
tures rather than from nature itself; and we should 
thus have lost that which constitutes the very highest 
charm in his delineations of scenery, namely, that the 
eflfect is produced by the selection of a few striking 
features, arranged with a light unconscious grace, 
neither too much nor too little — equally remote 
from the barren generalizations of a former age, and 
the dull servile fidelity with which so many inferior 
wrrters of our time fill in both background and fore- 
ground, having no more notion of the perspective of 
genius than Oiinese paper-stainers have of that of 
the atmosphere, and producing in fact not descrip- 
tions but inventories. 

The illness which he alludes to in his Memoir, 
as interrupting for a considerable period his attend- 
ance on the Latin and Greek classes in Edinburgh 
College, is spoken of more largely in one of his pre- 
faces.* It arose from the bursting of a blood-vessel 
in the lower bowels ; and I have heard him say that 
his uncle, Dr Rutherford, considered his recovery 
from it as little less than miraculous. His sweet 
temper and calm courage were no doubt important 
dements of safety. He submitted without a murmur 
to the severe discipline prescribed by his affectionate 

• See Preface to Waverlev, 1829. 



174 LIFE OF SIB WALTEE SCOTT. 

physician, and found consolation in poetry, romance, 
and the enthusiasm of young friendship. Day after 
day, John Irving relieyed his mother and sister in 
their attendance upon him. The hed on which he 
lay was piled with a constant succession of works of 
imagination, and sad realities were forgotten amidst 
the brilliant day'-dreams of genius drinking unwearied 
from the eternal fountains of Spenser and Shakspeare. 
Chess was recommended as a relief to these uniu'^ 
termitted, though desultory studies ; and he engaged 
eagerly in the game which had found favour with so 
many of his Paladins. Mr Irving remembers playii^ 
it with him hour after hour, in very cold weather, 
when, the windows being kept open as a part of the 
medical treatment, nothing but youthful nerves and 
spirit could have persevered. But Scott did not pur- 
sue the science of chess after his boyhood. He used 
to say that it was a shame to throw away upon mas- 
tering a mere game, however ingenious, the time 
which would suffice for the acquisition of a new lan- 
guage. '^ Surely," he said, " chess-playing is a sad 
waste of brains." 

His recovery was completed by another visit to 
Roxburghshire. Captain Robert Scott, who had been 
so kind to the sickly infant at Bath, finally retired 
about this time from his profession, and purchased 
the elegant villa of Rosebank, on the Tweed, a little 
below Kelso. Here Walter now took up his quar^ 



ACADEMICAJL STUDIES. 175 

ters, and here, during al) the rest of his youth, he 
found, whenever he chose, a second home, in many 
respects more agreeable than his own. His uncle, 
as letters to be subsequently quoted will show, had 
nothing of his father's coldness for polite letters, but 
entered into all his favourite pursuits with keen sym- 
pathy, and was consulted, from this time forth, upon 
all his juvenile essays, both in prose and verse. 

He does not seem to have resumed attendance at 
CoU^;e during the session of 1785-6 ; so that the 
Latin and Greek classes, with that of Logic, were the 
only ones he had passed through previous to the 
signing of his indentures as an apprentice to his 
father. The Memoir mentions the ethical course of 
Dugald Stewart, as if he had gone immediately from 
the logical professor (Mr Bruce) to that eminent 
lecturer; but he, in iiact, attended Mr Stewart four 
years afterwards, when beginning to consider himself 
as finally destined for the bar. 

I shall only add to what he sets down on the sub- 
ject of his early academical studies, that in this, as in 
almost every case, he appears to have underrated his 
own attainments. He had, indeed, no pretentions to 
the name of an extensive, far less of an accurate, 
Latin scholar; but he could read, I believe, any 
Latin author, of any age, so as to catch without diffi- 
culty his meaning; and although his favourite Latin 
poet, as well as historian, in later days, was Buchanan, 



176 LIFE OF SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

he had preserved, or subsequently acquired, a strong' 
relish for some others of more ancient date. I may 
mention, in particular, Lucan and Claudian. Of 
Greek, he does not exaggerate in saying that he had 
forgotten even the alphabet ; for he was puzzled with 
the words dotdog and ^o/9jnjg, which he had occasion 
to introduce, from some authority on his table, into 
his " Introduction to Popular Poetry," written in 
April 1830; and happening to be in the house with 
him at the time, he sent for me to insert them for 
him in his MS. Mr. Irving has informed us of the 
early period at which he enjoyed the real Tasso and 
Ariosto. I presume he had at least as soon as this 
enabled himself to read Gil Bias in the original; and, 
in all probability, we may refer to the same time of 
his life, or one not much later, his acquisition of as 
much Spanish as served for the Guerras Civiles de 
Granada, LazariUo de Tormes, and, above all, Don 
Quixote. He read all these languages in after life 
with about the same facility. I never but once heard 
him attempt to speak any of them, and that was when 
some of the courtiers of Charles X. came to Abbots- 
ford, soon after that unfortunate prince took up his 
residence for the second time at Hol3i*oodhou8e. 
Finding that one or two of these gentlemen could 
speak no English at all, he made some efforts to 
amuse them in their own language after the cham- 
pagne had been passing briskly round the table ; and 



SELF-EDUCATION. 177 

I was amused next morning with the expression of 
one of the party, who, alluding to the sort of reading 
in which Sir Walter seemed to have chiefly occu- 
pied himself, said — '<Mon Dieu! comme il estropiait, 
entre deux vins, le Fran^ais du bon sire de Joinville!" 
Of all these tongues, as of German somewhat later, 
he acquired as much as was needful for his own pur- 
poses, of which a critical study of any foreign lan- 
guage made at no time any part. In them he sought 
for incidents, and he found images; but for the trea- 
sures of diction he was content to dig on British soil. 
He had all he wanted in the old wells of " English 
undefiled," and the still living, though fast shrinking, 
waters of that sister idiom which had not always, as 
he flattered himself, deserved the name of a dialect. 

As may be said, I believe, with perfect truth of 
every reaUy great man, Scott was self-educated in 
every branch of knowledge which he ever turned to 
account in the works of his genius — and he has him<» 
self told us that his real studies were those lonely 
and desultory ones of which he has given a copy in 
the first chapter of Waverley, where the hero is 
represented as " driving through the sea of books, 
like a vessel without pilot or rudder;" that is to say, 
obeying nothing but the strong breath of native 
inclination: — He had read, and stored in a memory 
of uncommon tenacity, much curious, though ill 
arranged and miscellaneous information. In English 

VOL. I. M 



178 LIFE OF SIS WALTER SCOTT. 

literature, he was master of Shakspeare and Milton, 
of our earlier dramatic authors, of many picturesque 
and interesting passages from our old historical 
chronicles, and was particularly well acquainted with 
Spenser, Drayton, and other poets, who have exer- 
cised themselves on romantic fiction, — ofM themes 
the most fascinating to a yowthfid imagination^ he- 
fore the passions have roused themselves, and demand 
poetry of a more sentimental description^* ^ I need 
not repeat his enumeration of other fevourites, Pulci, 
the Decameron, Froissart, Brantome, Delanoue, and 
the chivalrous and romantic lore of Spain. I have 
quoted a passage so well known, only for the sake 
of the striking circumstance hy which it marks the 
very early date of these multifarious studies. 

* Wa?erley, vol. i. p. 32. 



APPRENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHER. 179 



CHAPTER V. 

Illustrations continued — Scotfs Apprenticeship to 
his Father — Excursions to the Highlands, Sfc. — 
Debating Societies — Early Correspondence, S^e. 
^c. 

1786-1790. 



In the Minute-books of the Society of Writers to 
the Signet appears the following entry: — " Edin- 
burgh, 15th May 1786. Compeared Walter Scott, 
and presented an indenture, dated 31st March last, 
entered into between him and Walter Scott, his son, 
for ^ye years from the date thereof, under a mutual 
penalty of £40 sterling." 

An inauspicious step this might at first sight ap- 
pear in the early history of one so strongly predisposed 
for pursuits wide as the antipodes asunder from the 
dry technicalities of conveyancing; but he himself, I 
belieye, was never heard, in his mature age, to express 
any regret that it should have been taken ; and I am 



1 80 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

conyinced for my part that it was a fortunate one. 
It prevented him, indeed, from passing with the usual 
regularity through a long course of Scotch meta- 
physics; but I extremely doubt whether any discipline 
could ever have led him to derive either pleasure or 
profit from studies of that order. His apprenticeship 
left him time enough, as we shall find, for continuing 
his application to the stores of poetry and romance, 
and those old chroniclers, who to the end were his 
darling historians. Indeed, if he had wanted any 
new stimulus, the necessity of devoting certain hours 
of every day to a routine of drudgery, however it 
might have operated on a spirit more prone to earth, 
must have tended to quicken his appetite for " the 
sweet bread eaten in secret." But the duties which 
he had now to fulfil were, in various ways, directly 
and positively beneficial to the developement both of 
his genius and his character. It was in the discharge 
of his functions as a Writer's Apprentice that he first 
penetrated into the Highlands, and formed those 
friendships among the surviving heroes of 1745, 
which laid the foundation for one great class of his 
works. Even the less attractive parts of his new 
vocation were calculated to give him a more complete 
insight into the ranaller workings of poor human 
nature, than can ever perhaps be gathered from the 
experience of the legal profession in its higher walk ; 
•—the etiquette of the bar in Scotland, as in England, 



AITEENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHER. 181 

being averse to personal intercourse between the ad- 
vocate and his client. But finally, and I will say 
chiefiy, it was to this prosaic discipline that he owed 
those habits of steady, sober diligence, which few ima- 
ginative authors had ever before exemplified — and 
which, unless thus beaten into his composition at a 
ductile stage, even he, in all probability, could never 
have carried into the almost professional exercise of 
some of the highest and most delicate faculties of the 
human mind. He speaks, in not the least remarkable 
passage of the preceding Memoir, as if constitutional 
indolence had been his portion in common with all 
the members of his father's family. When Gilford, 
in a dispute with Jacob Bryant, quoted Doctor 
Johnson's own confession that he knew little Greek, 
Bryant answered, " Yes, young man; but how shall 
we know what Johnson would have called much 
Greek?" and Gifibrd has recorded the deep impres- 
sion which this hint left on his own mind. What 
Scott would have called constitutional diligence, I 
know not; but surely, if indolence of any kind had 
been inherent in his nature, even the triumph of So- 
crates was not more signal than his. 

It will be, by some of my friends, considered as 
trivial to remark on such a circumstance — but the 
reader who is unacquainted with the professional ha- 
bits of the Scotch lawyers, may as well be told that 
the Writer's Apprentice receives a certain allowance 



182 LIFE OF SIE WALTEE SCOTT. 

in money for every page he transcribes; and that, as 
in those days the greater part of the business, even 
of the supreme courts, was carried on by means of 
written papers, a ready penman, in a well-employed 
chamber, could earn in this way enough, at all events, 
to make a handsome addition to the pocket-money 
which was likely to be thought suitable for a youth 
of fifteen by such a man as the elder Scott. The al- 
lowance being, I believe, threepence for every page 
containing a certain fixed number of words, when 
Walter had finished^ as he tells us he occasionally 
did, 120 pages within twenty-four hours, his fee 
would amount to thirty shillings; and in his early 
letters I find him more than once congratulating him- 
self on having been, by some such exertion, enabled 
to purchase a book, or a coin, otherwise beyond his 
reach. A schoolfellow, who was now, like himself, 
a writer's apprentice, recollects the eagerness with 
which he thus made himself master of Evans's Bal- 
lads, shortly after their publication ; and another of 
them, already often referred to, remembers, in par- 
ticular, his rapture with Meikle's Cumnor Hall, 
which first appeared in that collection. " After the 
labours of the day were over," says Mr Irving, " we 
often walked in the Meadows^* — (a large field inter- 
sected by formal alleys of old trees, adjoining George's 
Square) — "especially in the moonlight nights; and 
he seemed never weary of repeating the first stanza — 



APPEENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHEB. 183 

' The dews of summer night did fall — 
The Moon, sweet regent of the sky, 
Silvered the walls of Cmnnor Hall, 
And many an oak that grew thereby.' " 

I have thought it worth while to preserve these 
reminiscences of his companions at the time, though 
he has himself stated the circumstance in his Prefieuie 
to Kenilworth. " There is a period in youth," he 
there says, *^ when the mere power of numbers has 
a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in 
after life. At this season of immature taste, the au- 
thor was greatly delighted with the poems of Meikle 
and Langhome. The first stanza of Cumnor Hall 
especially had a peculiar enchantment for his youth- 
ful ear — the force of which is not yet (1829) en- 
tirely spent.** Thus that favourite elegy, after having 
dwelt on his memory and imagination for forty 
years, suggested the subject of one of his noblest 
romances. 

It is aflSrmed by a preceding biographer, on the 
authority of one of these brother-apprentices, that 
about this period Scott showed him a MS. poem 
on the Conquest of Granada, in four books, each 
amounting to about 400 lines, which, soon after it was 
finished, he committed to the flames.* As he states 
in his Essay on the Imitation of Popular Poetry, 

♦ Life of Scott, by Mr Allan, p. 63. 



184 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

that, for ten years previous to 1796, when his first 
translation from the German was executed, he had 
written no verses " except an occasional sonnet to 
his mistress's eyebrow," I presume this Conquest of 
Granada, the fruit of his study of the Guerras Ci- 
viles, must be assigned to the summer of 1786 — or, 
making allowance for trivial inaccuracy, to the next 
year at latest. It was probably composed in imita- 
tion of Meikle*8 Lusiad: — at all events, we have a 
very distinct statement, that he made no attempts 
in the manner of the old minstrels, early as his 
admiration for them had been, until the period of his 
acquaintance with Biirger. Thus with him, as with 
most others, genius had hazarded many a random 
effort ere it discovered the true key-note. Long had 

* Amid the strings his fingers stray*d, 
And an uncertain warbling made,* 

before ^ the measure wild' was caught, and 

' In varying cadence, soft or strong, 
He swept the sounding chords along.* 

His youthful admiration of Langhorne has been 
rendered memorable by his own record of his first 
and only interview with his great predecessor, Robert 
Bums. Although the letter in which he narrates 
this incident, addressed to myself in 1827, when I 
was writing a short biography of that poet, has been 



ROBERT BURNS 1786-7. 



185 



often reprinted, it is too important for my present 
purpose to be omitted here. 

" As for Bums," he writes, " I may truly say, 
VirgUium vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 
1786-7» when he came first to Edinburgh, but had 
sense and feeling enough to be much interested in 
his poetry, and would have given the world to know 
him; but I had very little acquaintance with any 
literary people, and still less with the gentry of the 
west country, the two sets that he most frequented. 
Mr Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my 
father's. He knew Bums, and promised to ask him 
to his lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity to 
keep his word, otherwise I might have seen more of 
this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one 
day at the late venerable Professor Fergusson's, where 
there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, 
among whom I remember the celebrated Mr Dugald 
Stewart. Of course we youngsters sate silent, looked 
and listened. The only thing I remember which was 
remarkable in Burns' manner, was the effect pro- 
duced upon him by a print of Bunbur/s, represent- 
ing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting 
in misery on the one side, on the other his widow, 
with a child in her arms. These lines were written 
beneath, — . 

' Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden*8 plain. 
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain ; 



186 LIFE OF SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

Bent o*er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew. 
Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptized in tears.* 

Burns seemed much ajQfected by the print, or rather 
the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He ac- 
tually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, 
and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered 
that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Lang- 
home's, called by the unpromising title of ^ The 
Justice of the Peace.' I whispered my information 
to a friend present, who mentioned it to Bums, who 
rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though 
of mere ciyility, I then received, and still recollect, 
with very great pleasure. 

^< His person was strong and robust : his manners 
rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness 
and simplicity, which received part of its effect per- 
haps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary 
talents. His features are represented in Mr Na- 
smyth's picture, but to me it conveys the idea that 
they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I 
think his countenance was more massive than it 
looks in any of the portraits. I would have taken 
the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very 
sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school — 
i, e. none of your modem agriculturists, who keep 
labourers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman 



i KOBEET BURNS. 187 

I 

who held his own plough. There was a strong ex- 
pression of sense and shrewdness in all his linea- 
mesnts ; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical 
character and temperament. It was large, and of a 
dark cast, and glowed (I say literally glowed) when 
he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such 
another eye in a human head, though I have seen 
the most distinguished men in my time. His con- 
versation expressed perfect self-confidence, without 
the shghtest presumption. Among the men who' 
were the most learned of their time and country, he 
expressed himself with perfect firmness, hut without 
the least intrusive forwardness ; and when he differed 
in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, 
yet at the same time with modesty. I do not re- 
memher any part of his conversation distinctly enough 
to be quoted, nor did I ever see him again, except 

: in the street, where he did not recognise me, as I 

^ could not expect he should. He was much caressed 

in Edinburgh, but (considering what literary emolu- 
ments have been since his day) the efforts made for 

i his relief were extremely trifling. 

I " I remember on this occasion I mention, I thought 

Bums' acquaintance with English poetry was rather 

I limited, and also, that having twenty times the abili- 

ties of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of 
them with too much humility as his models; there; 
was doubtless national predilection in his estimate." 



1 88 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I need not remark on the extent of knowledge, and 
justness of taste, exemplified in this early measure- 
ment of Bums, both as a student of English litera- 
ture and as a Scottish poet. The print, over which 
Scott saw Burns shed tears, is still in the possession 
of Dr Fergusson's family, and I had often heard him 
tell the story, in the room where the precious relic 
liangs, before I requested him to set it down in wri- 
ting — how little anticipating the use to which I 
should ultimately apply it! 

His intimacy with Adam (now Sir Adam Fergus- 
son) was thus his first means of introduction to the 
higher literary society of Edinburgh; and it was very 
probably to that connexion that he owed, among the 
rest, his acquaintance with the blind poet Blacklock, 
whom Johnson, twelve years earlier, ^' beheld with 
reverence." We have seen, however, that the ve- 
nerable author of Douglas was a friend of his own 
parents, and had noticed him even in his infancy at 
Bath. John Home now inhabited a villa at no great 
distance from Edinburgh, and there, all through his 
young days, Scott was a frequent g^est. Nor must 
it be forgotten that his uncle, Dr Rutherford, in- 
herited much of the general accomplishments, as well 
as the professional reputation of his father — and that 
it was beneath that roof he saw, several years before 
this, Dr Cartwright, then in the enjoyment of some 
fame as a poet. In this family, indeed, he had more 



IKVERNAHYLE. 189 

than one kind and strenuous encourager of his early 
literary tastes, as will be shown abundantly when we 
reach certain relics of his correspondence with his 
mother's sister. Dr Rutherford's good-natured re- 
monstrances with him, as a boy, for reading at 
breakfast, are well remembered, and will remind my 
reader of a similar trait in the juyenile manners both 
of Burns and Byron ; nor was this habit entirely laid 
aside even in Scott's advanced age. 

If he is quite accurate in referring his first ac- 
quaintance with the Highlands to his fifteenth year, 
this incident also belongs to the first season of his 
apprenticeship. His father had, among a rather nu- 
merous list of Highland clients, Alexander Stewart 
of Invernahyle, an enthusiastic Jacobite, who had 
survived to recount, in secure and vigorous old age, 
his active experiences in the insurrections both of 
1715 and 1745. He had, it appears, attracted Wal- 
ter's attention and admiration at a very early date ; 
for he speaks of having ''seen him in arms" and 
heard him " exult in the prospect of drawing his 
claymore once more before he died," when Paul 
Jones threatened a descent on Edinburgh; which 
transaction occurred in September 1779. Inverna- 
hyle, as Scott adds, was the only person who seemed 
to have retained possession of his cool senses at the 
period of that disgraceful alarm, and offered the ma- 



19P LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

gistrates to collect as many Highlanders as would 
suffice for cutting off any part of the pirate's crew 
that might venture, in quest of plunder, into a city 
full of high houses and narrow lanes, and every way 
well calculated for defence. The eager delight with 
which the young apprentice now listened to the tales 
of this fine old man's early days, produced an invi- 
tation to his residence among the mountains; and to 
this excursion he probably devoted the few weeks of 
an autumnal vacation — whether in 1786 or 1787, it 
is of no great consequence to ascertain. 

In the Introduction to one of his Novels he has 
preserved a vivid picture of his sensations when the 
vale of Perth first burst on his view, in the course of 
his progress to Invemahyle, and the description has 
made classical ground of the Wicks of Baiglie, the 
jspot from which that beautiful landscape was sur- 
veyed. '^ Childish wonder, indeed," he says, ^< was an 
ingredient in my delight, for I was not above fifteen 
years old, and as this had been the first excursion 
which I was permitted to make on a pony of my 
own, I also experienced the glow of independence^ 
mingled with that degree of anxiety which the most 
conceited boy feels when he is first abandoned to his 
own undirected counsels. I recollect pulling up the 
'reins, without meaning to do so, and gazing on the 
scene before me as if I had been afraid it would shift. 



INVERNAHYLE. 191 

like those in a theatre, before I could distinctly ob- 
serve its different parts/ or convince myself that what 
I saw was real. Since that hour, the recollection of 
that inimitable landscape has possessed the strongest 
influence over my mind, and retained its place as a 
memorable thing, while much that was influential 
on my own fortunes has fled from my recollection." 
So speaks the poet ; and who will not recognise his 
habitual modesty, in thus undervaluing, as unin- 
fluential in comparison with some afiair of worldly 
business, the ineffaceable impression thus stamped on 
the glowing imagination of his boyhood ? 

I need not quote the numerous passages scattered 
over his writtings, both early and late, in which he 
dwells with fond affection on the chivalrous charac- 
ter of Invernahyle — 'the delight with which he heard 
the veteran describe his broadsword duel with Rob 
Roy — his campaigns with Mar and Charles Edward 
— and his long seclusion (as pictured in the story of 
Bradwardine) within a rocky cave situated not far 
from his own house, while it was garrisoned by a 
party of English soldiers, after the battle of Culloden^ 
Here, too, still survived the trusty henchman who 
had attended the chieftain in many a bloody field and 
perilous escape, the same " grim-loakii^ old High- 
lander" who was in the act of cutting down Colonel 
Whitefoord with his Lochaber axe at Prestonpans 
when his master arrested the blow — an incident to 



/ 
/ 



192 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

which Inyemahyle owed his life, and we are indebted 
for another of the most striking pages in Waverley. 
I have often heard Scott mention some curious 
particulars of his first visit to the remote fastness of 
one of these Highland friends ; but whether he told 
the story of Invernahyle, or of one of his own rela- 
tions of the Clan Campbell, I do not recollect; I 
rather think the latter was the case. On reaching 
the brow of a bleak eminence overhanging the pri- 
mitive tower and its tiny patch of cultivated ground, 
he found his host and three sons, and perhaps half- 
a-dozen attendant gillies, . all stretched half asleep in 
their tartans upon the heath, with guns and dogs, 
and a profusion of game about them ; while in the 
courtyard, far below, appeared a company of women, 
actively engaged in loading a cart with manure. The 
stranger was not a Uttle astonished when he disco- 
vered, on descending from the height, that among 
these industrious females were the laird's own lady, 
and two or three of her daughters ; but they seemed 
quite unconscious of having been detected in an oc- 
cupation unsuitable to their rank — retired presently 
to their " bowers," and when they re-appeared in 
other dresses, retained no traces of their moming^s 
work, except complexions glowing with a radiant 
freshness, for one evening of which many a high- 
bred beauty would have bartered half her diamonds. 
He found the young ladies not ill informed, and ex- 



HIGHLAND EXCURSIONS. 1 93 

ceedingly agreeable; and the song and the dance 
seemed to form the inyariable termination of their 
bosj days. I mnst not forget his admiration at the 
principal article of this laird's first course ; namely, 
a gigantic kaggisf borne into the hall in a wicker 
basket by two half-naked Celts, while the piper 
stratted fiercely behind them, blowing a tempest of 
dissonance. 

These Highland vfeits were repeated almost every 
smnmer for several successive years, and perhaps 
even the first of them was in some degree connected 
with his professional business. At all events, it was 
to his allotted task of enforcing the execution of a 
legal instrument against some Maclarens, refractory 
tenants of Stewart of Appin, brother-in-law to In- 
vemahyle, that Scott owed his introduction to the 
scenery of the Lady of the Lake. " An escort of 
a sergeant and six men," he says, '^ was obtained 
from a Highland regiment lying in Stirling, and the 
author, then a writer's apprentice, equivalent to the 
honourable situation of an attorney's clerk, was in- 
vested with the superintendence of the expedition, 
with directions to see that the messenger discharged 
his duty fully, and that the gallant sergeant did not 
exceed his part by committing violence or plunder. 
And thus it happened, oddly enough, that the author 
first entered the romantic scenery of Loch Katrine, 
oi which he may perhaps say he has somewhat ex- 

VOL. I. ir 



194 lilFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

tended the reputation, riding in all the dignity of 
danger, with a front and rear guard, and loaded arms. 
The sergeant was absolutely a Highland Sergeant 
Kite, full of stories of Rob Roy and of himself, and 
a very good companion. We experienced no inter- 
ruption whatever, and when we came to Invernenty, 
found the house deserted. We took up our quarters 
for the night, and used some of the victuals which 
we found there. The Maclarens, who probably had 
never thought of any serious opposition, went to 
America, where, having had some slight share in 
removing them from their paupera regnoy I sin- 
cerely hope they prospered." * 

That he entered with ready zeal into such profes- 
sional business as inferred Highland expeditions with 
comrades who had known Rob Roy, no one will 
think strange ; but more than one of his biographers 
allege, that in the ordinary indoor fagging of the 
chamber in George's Square, he was always an un- 
willing, and rarely an efficient assistant. Their 
addition, that he often played chess with one of his 
companions in the office, and had to conceal the 
board with precipitation when the old gentleman's 
footsteps were heard on the staircase, is, I do not 
doubt, true; and we may remember along with it 
his own insinuation that his father was sometimes 

* Introduction to Rob Hoy. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 195 

poring' in his secret nook over Spottiswoode or 
Wodrow, when his apprentices supposed him to be 
deep in Dirleton's Doubts, or Stair^s decisions. But 
the Memoir of 1808, so candid — indeed more than 
candid — as to many juyenile irregularities, contains 
no confession that supports the broad assertion to 
which I have alluded ; nor can I easily believe, that 
with his affection for his father, and that sense of 
duty which seems to have been inherent in his cha- 
racter, and, lastly, with the evidence of a most severe 
training in industry which the habits of his after-life 
presented, it is at all deserving of serious accepta- 
tion. His mere handwriting, indeed, continued, 
during the whole of his prime, to afford most 
striking and irresistible proof how completely he 
must have submitted himself for some very con- 
siderable period to the mechanical discipline of his 
father^s office. It spoke to months after months of 
this humble toil, as distinctly as the illegible scrawl 
of Lord Byron did to his self-mastership from the 
hour that he left Harrow. There are some little 
technical trick&y such as no gentleman who has not 
been subjected to a similar regimen ever can fall 
into, which he practised invariably while composing 
his poetry, which appear not unfreq-uently on the 
MSS. of his best novels, and which now and then 
dropt instinctively from his pen, even in the private 
letters and diaries of his closing years. I allude 



196 MFE OP SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

particularly to a sort of flourish at the bottom of the 
page, originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing 
as a safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line 
between the legitimate text and the attesting signa- 
ture. He was quite sensible that this ornament 
might as well be dispensed with; and his &mily 
often heard him mutter, after involuntarily perform- 
ing it, *' There goes the old shop again P 

I dwell on this matter, because it- was always his 
favourite tenet, in contradiction to what he called 
the cant of sonnetteers, that there is no necessary 
connexion between genius and an aversion or con- 
tempt for any of the common duties of life; he 
thought, on the contrary, that to spend some fair 
portion of every day in any matter of fact occupa* 
tion, is good for the higher faculties themselves in 
the upshot. In a word, from beginning to end, he 
piqued himself on being a man of husineasi and did 
— with one sad and memorable exception — what^ 
ever the ordinary course of things threw in his way, 
in exactly the business-like fashion which might 
have been expected from the son of a thoroughbred 
old Clerk to the Signet, who had never deserted his 
father's profession. 

In the winter of 1788, however, his apprentice 
habits were exposed to a new danger; and from 
that date I believe them to have undergone a con«^ 
siderable change. He was then sent to attend the 



CIVIL LAW CLASS. 197 

lectures of the Professolr of Civil Law in the Uni- 
versity, this course forming part of the usual pro- 
fessional education of Writers to the Signet, as well 
as of Adrocates. For some time his companions, 
when in Edinburgh, had been chiefly, almost solely, 
his broliifer apprentices and the clerks in his fathet^s 
office. He had latterly seen comparatirely little 
even of the better of his old High School friends, 
such as Fergusson and Irving — for though both of 
these also were writer^s apprentices, they had been 
indentured to other masters, and each had natutally 
formed new intimacies within his own chamber. 
The civil law class brought him again into daily 
contact widi both Trying and Fergusson, as well 
as others of his earlier acquaintance of the higher 
ranks ; but it also led him into the society of some 
young gentlemen previously unknown to him, who 
had from the outset been destined for the bar, and 
whose conversation, tinctured with certain preju- 
dices natural to scions of what he calls in Redgaunt- 
let the Scottish' noblesse de la rohe, soon banished 
from his mind every thought of ultimately adhering 
to the secondary branch of the law. He found these 
future barristers cultivating general litenature, witli- 
out the least apprehension that such elegant pursuits 
could be regarded by any one as interfering with the 
proper studies of their professional career; ju^ly 
believing, on the contrary, that for the higher eUfis 



198 LIFE 0F SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

of forensic exertion some acquaintance with almost 
every branch of science and letters is a necessary 
preparative. He contrasted their liberal aspirations^ 
and the encomugement which these received in their 
domestic circles, with the narrower views which pre- 
dominated in his own home ; and resolved to gratify 
his ambition by adopting a most precarious walk in 
life, instead of adhering to that in which he might 
have counted with perfect security on the early 
attainment of pecuniary independence. This reso- 
-' luKoh appears to have been foreseen by his father, 
long before it was announced in terms ; and the 
handsome manner in which the old gentleman con- 
ducted himself upon the occasion, is remembered 
with dutiful gratitude in the preceding autobio- 
graphy. 

The most important of these new alliances was 
the intimate friendship which he now formed witk 
Mr John Irving's near relation, William Clerk of 
Eldin, of whose powerful talents and extensive ac- 
complishments we shall hereafter meet with many 
enthusiastic notices. It was in company with this 
gentleman that he entered the debating societies 
described in his Memoir; through him he soon 
became linked in the closest intimacy with George 
Cranstoun (now Lord Corehouse), George Aber- 
cromby (now Lord Abercromby), John James Ed- 
monstone of Newton (whose mother was sister of 



WILLIAM CLERK OF ELBIN. 199 

Sir Ralph Abercromby), Patrick Murray of Sim- 
prim, Sir Patrick Murray of Ochtertyre, and a 
group of other young men, all high in birth and 
connexion, and all remarkable in early life for the 
qualities which afterwards led them to eminent 
station, or adorned it. The introduction to their 
several families is alluded to by Scott as haying 
opened to him abundantly certain advantages, which 
no one could have been more qualified to improve, 
but from which he had hitherto been in great mea^ 
sure debarred in consequence of the retired habits of 
his parents. 

Mr Clerk says, that he had been struck from the 
first day he entered the civil law class-room with 
something odd and remarkable in Scott's appearance ; 
what this something was, he cannot now recall, but 
he remembers telling his companion some time after- 
wards that he thought he looked like a hautboy player. 
Scott was amused with this notion, as he had never 
touched a musical instrument of any kind; but I fancy 
his friend had been watching a certain noticeable but 
altogether indescribable play of the upper hp when 
in an abstracted mood. He rallied Walter, he says, 
during one of' their first evening walks together, on 
the slovenliness of his dress: he wore a pair of cor- 
duroy breeches, much glazed by the rubbing of his 
staff, which he immediately flourished — and said, 



200 UF£ OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

'^they be good enough for drinking in-— let us go 
and have some oysters in the Covenant Close." 

Conyiyial habits were then indulged among the 
young men of Edinburgh, whether students of law^ 
solicitors, or barristers, to an extent now happily un* 
known; and this anecdote recalls some striking hints 
on that subject which occur in Scott's brief autobio* 
graphy. That he partook profusely in the juvenile 
bacchanalia of that day, and continued to take a plen- 
tiful share in sudi jollities down to the time of his 
marriage, are &cts worthy of being distinctly stated ; 
for no man in mature life was more habitually averse 
to every sort of intemperance. He could, when I first 
knew him, swallow a great quantity of wine without 
being at all visibly disordered by it; but nothing short 
of some very particular occasion could ever induce 
him to put this strength of head to a trial; and I 
have heard him many times utter words which no 
one in the days of his youthful temptation can be the 
worse for remembering: — ^< Depend upon it, of all 
vices drinking is the most incompatible with great- 



The liveliness of his conversation — the strange 
vuiety of his knowledge — and above all, perhaps, 
the portentous tenacity of his memory — riveted more 
and more Clerk's attention, and commanded the won- 
der of all his new allies; but of these extraordinary 
gifts Scott himself appeared to be little conscious; or 



SEA EXCURSIONS. 201 

at least he impressed them all as attaching infinitely 
greater consequence — (exactly as had been the case 
with him in the days of the Cowgate Port and the 
kittle nine' steps) — to feats of personal agility and 
prowess. William Clerk's brother, James, a midship- 
man in the navy, happened to come home from a 
cmise in the Mediterranean shortly after this acquaint- 
ance began, and Scott and the sailor became almost 
at sight ** sworn brothers." In order to complete his 
time under the late Sir Alexander Cochrane, who 
was then on the Leith station, James Clerk obtained 
the command of a lugger, and the young friends often 
made little excursions to sea with him. ^< The first 
time Scott dined on board," says William Clerk, ^ we 
met before embarking at a tavern in Leith — it was 
a large party, mostly midshipmen, and strangers to 
him, and our host introducing his landsmen guests 
said, < My brother you know, gentlemen ; as for Mr 
Scott, mayhaps you may take him for a poor lamiter, 
but he is the first to begin a row, and the last to end 
it;' which eulogium he confirmed with some of the 
expletives of Tom Pipes." * When, many years after- 
wards. Clerk read The Pirate, he was startled by the 
resurrection of a hundred traits of the table-talk of 

* ** Diima steer him,'* says Hobbie Elliot ; ** ye may think 
£lshie*s but a lamiter, but I warrant ye, grippie for grippie, hell 
gar the blue blood spin frae your nails — his hand's lilre a smith's 
Yice." — Black Dwarf— . Waverley Noveb, vol. is. p. 202. 



202 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

this lugger; but the author has since traced some o£ 
the most striking passages in that novel to his recol- 
lection of the almost childish period when he hung 
on his own brother Robert's stories about Rodney's 
battles and the haunted keys of the West Indies. 

One morning Scott called on Clerk, and, exhibit^ 
ing his stick ail cut and marked, told him he had 
been attacked in the streets the night before by three, 
fellows, against whom he had defended himself for 
an hour. " By Shrewsbury clock?" said his friend* 
« No," said Scott, smiling, « by the Tron." But 
thenceforth, adds Mr Clerk, and for twenty years, 
after, he called his walking stick by the name of 
" Shrewsbury." 

With these comrades Scott now resumed, and 
pushed to a much greater extent, his early habits of 
wandering over the country in quest of castles and 
other remains of antiquity, his passion for which 
derived a new impulse from the conversation of the 
celebrated John Clerk of Eldin,* the father of his. 
friend. William Clerk well remembers his father 
telling a story which was introduced in due time in 
The Antiquary. While he was visiting his grand- 
father, Sir John Clerk, at DumcriefF, in Dumfries- 
shire, many years before this time, the old Baronet 

* Author of the famous Essay on dividing the Line in Sea- 

£ght8. 



WILLIAM CLERK) &C. 203 

carried some English yirtdosos to see a supposed 
Roman camp ; and on his exclaiming at a particular 
spot, " This I take to have been the Praetorium/' a 
herdsman, who stood by, answered, " PrsBtorium here 
Praetorium there, I made it wi' a daughter spade."* 
Many traits of the elder Clerk were, his son has no 
doubt, embroidered on the character of George Con- 
stable in the composition of Jonathan Oldbuck. The 
old gentleman's enthusiasm for antiquities was often 
played on by these young friends, but more effectually 
by his eldest son, John Clerk (Lord Eldin), who,' 
having a great genius for art, used to amuse himself 
with manufacturing mutilated heads, which, after 
being buried for a convenient time in the ground, 
were accidentally discovered in some fortunate hour, 
and received by the laird with great honour as valu- 
able accessions to his museum.']' 

On a fishing excursion to a loch near Howgate, 
among the Moorfoot Hills, Scott, Clerk, Irving, and 
Abercromby, spent the night at a little public-house 
kept by one Mrs Margaret Dods, When St Ronan's 
Well was published, Clerk, meeting Scott in the 

* Compare " The Antiquary," vol. i. p. 49. 

f The most remarkable of these antique heads was so highlj 
appreciated by another distinguished connoisseur, the late Earl of 
Buchan, that he carried it off from Mr Clerk's museum, and pre- 
sented it to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries — - in whose ooi- 
laction, no doubt, it may still be admired. 



204 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Street, obBenred, <^ That's an odd name; surely I 
have met with it somewhere before." Scott smiled, 
said, ^^ Don't yon remember Howgate?" and passed 
on. The name alone, however, was taken from the 
Howgate hostess. 

At one of their drinking bouts of those days, 
William Clerk, Sir P. Murray, Edmonstone, and 
Abercromby, being of the party, the sitting was pro* 
longed to a very late hour, and Scott fell asleep. 
When he awoke, his friends succeeded in convincing 
him that he had sung a song in the course of the 
evening, and sung it extremely well. How must 
these gentlemen have chuckled when they read Frank 
Osbaldistone's account of his revels in the old hall ! 
*^ It has even been reported by maligners that I sung 
a song while under this vinous influence; but as I 
remember nothing of it, and never attempted to turn 
a tune in all my life, either before or since, I would 
willingly hope there is no actual foundation for the 
calumny." * 

On one of his first long walks with Clerk and 
others of the same set, their pace, being about four 
miles an hour, was found rather too much for Scott, 
and he offered to contract for three, which mea- 
sure was thenceforth considered as the legal one. At 
this rate they often continued to wander from five 

* Rob Rojr — Waverley Novels, yol. Til p. 162. 



WIIXIAM CITRIC, &c. 205 

in the morning till eight in the evening, halting for 
such refreshment at mid-day as any village alehouse 
might afford. On many occasions^ however, they 
hnul stretched so far into the country, that they were 
obliged to be absent from home all night; and though 
great was the alarm which the first occurrence of this 
sort created in George's Square, the family soon got 
accustomed to such things, and little notice was 
taken, even though Walter remained away for the 
better part of a week. I have heard him laugh 
heartily over the recollections of one protracted ex- 
cursion, towards the close of which the party found 
themselves a long day's walk — thirty miles, I think 
I — from Edinburgh, without a single sixpence lefk 

I among them. ^< We were put to our shifts," said he; 

" but we asked every now and then at a cottage-door 
for a drink of water ; and one or two of the good-> 
wives, observing our worn-out looks, brought forth 
milk in place of water -^ so with that, and hips and 
haws, we came in little the worse." His father met 
him with some impatient questions as to what he had 
been living on so long, for the old man well knew 
how scantily his pocket was supplied. '^ Pretty much 
like the young ravens," answered he ; ^' I only wished 
I had been as good a player on the flute as poor 
George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. If I 
had his art, I should like nothing better than to 
tramp like him from cottage to cottage over the 



206 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

world." — "I doubt,** said the grave Clerk to the 
Signet, " I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae 
better than a gangrel scrape gut** Some allusions 
to reproaches of this kind occur in the " Memoir;" 
and we shall find others in letters subsequent to his 
admission at the bar.* 

The debating club formed among these young 
friends at this era of their studies, was called The 
Literary Society; and is not to be confounded with 
the more celebrated Speculative Society, which Scott 
did not join for two years later. At the Literary 
he spoke frequently, and very amusingly and sensibly, 
but was not at all numbered among the most brilliant 
members. He had a world of knowledge to produce ; 
but he had not acquired the art of arranging it to the 
best advantage in a continued address; nor, indeed, 
did he ever, I think, except under the influence of 
strong personal feeling, even when years and fame 
had given him full confidence in himself, exhibit 
upon any occasion the powers of oral eloquence. His 
antiquarian information, however, su^^lied many an 

* After the cautious father had had further opportunity of 
observing his son's proceedings, his wife happened one night 
to express some anxiety on the protracted absence of Walter and 
his brother Thomas. " My dear Annie,*' said the old man, 
" Tom is with Walter this time ; and have you not yet perceived 
that wherever Walter goes he is pretty sure to find his bread but- 
tered on both sides ? "— From Mn Thomas SeoU, — 1 839. 



DEBATING CLUBS. 207 

interesting feature in these evenings of discussion. 
He had already dabbled in Anglo-Saxon and the 
Norse Sagas : in his Essay on Imitations of Popular 
Poetry, he alludes to these studies as having facili- 
tated his acquisition of German: —-But he was deep 
especially in Fordun and Wyntoun, and all the Scotch 
chronicles ; and his friends rewarded him by the 
honourable title of Duns Scotus. . 

A smaller society, formed with less ambitious views, 
originated in a ride to Pennycuik, the seat of the 
head of Mr Clerk's family, whose elegant hospitalities 
are recorded in the Memoir. This was called, by 
way of excellence. The Cluhy and I believe it is 
continued under the same name to this day. Here, 
too, Walter had his sobriquet ; and — his corduroy 
breeches, I presume, not being as yet worn out — it 
was Colonel Grogg.* 

* " The members of The Club used to meet on Friday evenings 
in a room in Carrubber*8 Close, from which some of them usually 
adjourned to sup at an oyster tavern in the same neighbourhood. 
In after life, those of them who chanced to be in Edinburgh dined 
together twice every year, at the close of the winter and summer 
sessions of the Law Courts ; and during thirty years, Sir Walter 
was very rarely absent on these occasions. It was also a rule„ 
that when any member received an appointment or promotion, he 
should give a dinner to his old associates ; and they had accord- 
ingly two such dinners from him*— one when he became Sheriff of 
Selkirkshire, and another when he was named Clerk of Session. 
The original members were, in number, nineteen — viz. Sir 



208 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

Meantime he had not broken up his connexion 
with Rosebank; he appears to have ^)ent several 
weeks in the autumn, both of 1788 and 1789) under 
his uncle's roof; and it was, I think, of his journey 
thither, in the last named year, that he used to tell 
an anecdote, which I shall here set down — how 
shorn, alas! of all the accessaries that gave it life 
when he recited it. Callings, before he set out, on 
one of the ancient spinsters of his fietmily, to enquire 
if she had any message for Kelso, she retired, and 
presently placed in his hands a packet of some bulk 
and weight, which required, she said, very particular 
attention. He took it without examinii^ the address, 
and carried it in his pocket next day, not at all to 
the lightening of a forty mile's ride in August. On 
his arrival, it turned out to contain one of the old 

Walter Scott, Mr William Clerk, Sir A. Fergusson, Mr James 
Edmonstone, Mr George Abercromby (Lord Abercromby), Mr 
D. Boyle (now Lord Justice-Clerk), Mr James Glaasford (Advo- 
cate), Mr James Fergusson (Clerk of Session), Mr David Mony- 
penny (Lord Pitmilly), Mr Robert Davidson (Professor of Law 
at Glasgow), Sir William Rae, Bart, Sir Patrick Murray, Bart., 
JDamd Dougku (Lord Boston), Mr Murray of Simprin, Mr 
Monteith of Qoeebum, Mr Archibald MtUer (son of Professor 
Miller), Baron Redtn, a Hanoverian; the Honourable Thomtu 
Douglas, afterwards Earl of Selkirk)— and Jokn Irving. Ez-^ 
cept the five whose names are underlined, these original members 
are all still alive.** ~ Xefter fiom Mr Irving, dated 2M Sep- 
1836. 



ROSEBANK 1788. 209 

lad/s pattens, sealed up for a particular cobbler in 
Kelso, and accompanied with fourpence to pay for 
mending it, and special directions that it might be 
brought back to her by the same economical con- 
veyance. 

It will be seen from the following letter, the ear- 
liest of Scott's writing that has fallen into my hands, 
that professional business had some share in this ex- 
cursion to Kelso ; but I consider with more interest 
the brief allusion to a day at Sandy-Knowe: — 

" To Mrs Scottf George Square^ Edinburgh, 

«* (With a pared. J 

*' Rosebank, 5th Sept. 1788. 
' Dear Mother, 

" I was favoured with your letter, and send you 
Anne's stockings along with this : I would have sent 
them last week, but had some expectations of a pri- 
vate opportunity. I have been very happy for this 
fortnight; we have some plan or other for every 
day. Last week my uncle, my cousin William,* and 
I, rode to Smailholm, and from thence walked to 
Sandy-Knowe Craigs, where we spent the whole day, 
tmd made a very hearty dinner by the side of the 
Orderlaw Well, on some cold beef and bread and 

* The present Laird of Raebum. 
VOL. I. O 



210 LIFE OF SIA WALTER SCOTT. 

cheese : we had also a small case-bottle of rum to 
make grog with, which we drank to the Sandy-Knowe 
bairns, and all their connexions. This jaunt gave 
rae much pleasure, and had I time, I would giye you 
a more full account of it. 

" The fishings has been hitherto but indifferent, 
and I fear I shall not be able to accomplidi my pro- 
raise with regard to the wiyid ducks. I was out on 
Friday, and only saw three. I may probably, how- 
ever, send you a hare, as my uncle has got a present 
of two greyhounds from Sir H. MacDougall, and as 
he has a licence, only waits till the corn is off the 
ground to commence coursing. Be it known to you, 
however, I am not altogether employed in amuse- 
ments, for I have got two or three clients besides 
my uncle, and am busy drawing tacks and contracts, 
— not, however, of marriage. I am in a fair way 
of making money, if I stay here long. 

" Here I have written a pretty lon^ letter, and 
nothing in it ; but you know writing to one'^s friends 
is the next thing to seeing them. My love to my 
father and the boys, from. Dear Mother, your dutiful 
and affectionate son, 

Walteb Scott." 

It appears from James Ballantyne's tnemoremdoy 
that having been very early bound apprentice to a 
solicitor in Kelso, he had no intercourse wit¥' Scott 



JAMES BAIiLANTTNE. 21 1 

during the three or four years that followed their 
eompanionship at the school of Lancelot Whale;, 
but Ballantjne was now sent to spend a winter ia 
fidinburgh, for the completion of his professional 
education, and in the course of his attendance on, 
the Scot«4aw elass^ became a member of a young 
Teviotdale club, where Walter Scott seldom failed to 
make his appearance. They supped together, it seems, 
once a-month ; and here, as in the associations above 
mentioned, good fellowship was often pushed beyond 
the limits of modem indulgence. The strict inti- 
macy between Scott and Ballantyne was not at this 
time renewed — their avocations prevented it — but 
the latter was no uninterested observer of his old 
comrade^s bearing on this new scene. '^ Upon all 
these occasions," he says, " one of the principal fea- 
tures of his character was displayed as conspicuously 
^8 I believe it ever was at any later period. This 
was the remarkable ascendency he never haled to 
exhibit among his young companions, and which 
appeared to arise from their involuntary and uncon-^ 
scions submission to the same firmness of imder- 
standing, and gentle exercise of it, which produced 
the same effects throughout his after life. Where 
there was always a good deal of drinking, there was 
of course now ami then a good deal of quarrelling. 
But three words from Walter Scott never failed to 
put all such propensities to quietness." 



212 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Mr Ballantyne's account of his friend's peace* 
making exertions at this club may seem a little at 
variance with some preceding details. There is a 
difference, however, between encouraging quarrels in 
the bosom of a convivial party, and taking a fair 
part in a row between one's own party and another* 
£ut Ballantyne adds, that bX The Teviotdaley Scott 
was always remarkable for being the most temperate 
of the set ; and if the club consisted chiefly of per- 
sons, like Ballantyne himself, somewhat inferior to 
Scott in birth and station, his carefulness both of so- 
briety and decorum at their meetings was but another 
feature of his unchanged and unchangeable character 
— qiudis ab incepto. 

At one of the many merry suppers of this time^ 
Walter Scott had said something, of which, on re- 
collecting himself next morning, he was sensible that 
his friend Clerk might have reason to complain. He 
sent him accordingly a note apologetical, which has 
by some accident been preserved, and which I am 
sure every reader will agree with me in considering 
well worthy of preservation. In it Scott contrives 
to make use of both his own club designations, and 
addresses his friend by another of the same order, 
which Clerk had received in consequence of com- 
paring himself on some forgotten occasion to Sir 
J'ohn Brute in the play. This characteristic docu-^ 
ment is as follows : — 



COLONEL GROGQ AND DUNS SC0TU8. 213 

« To William aeric, Esq. 

" Dear Baronet, 

" I am sorry to find that our friend Colonel 
Grogg has behaved with a very undue degree of 
vehemence in a dispute with you last night, occa- 
sioned by what I am convinced was a gross miscon- 
ception of your expressions. As the Colonel, though 
a military man, is not too haughty to acknowledge 
an error, he has commissioned me to make his apo- 
logy as a mutual friend, which I am convinced you 
will accept from yours ever. 

Duns Scotus." 

** Given at Castle Duns, 
Monday." 

I should perhaps have mentioned sooner, that when 
first Duns Scotus became the Saronefs daily com- 
panion — this new aUiance was observed with con- 
siderable jealousy by some of his former inseparables 
of the writing office. At the next annual supper of 
the clerks and apprentices, ihegatuli/ of the chamber, 
this feeling showed itself in various ways, and when 
the cloth was drawn, Walter rose and asked what 
was meant. " Well,'' said one of the lads, " since 
you will have it out, you are cutting your old friends 
for the sake of Clerk and some more of these dons 
that look down on the like of us." ^< Gentlemen,'* 



214 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Boswered Scott, " I will never cut any man unless 1 
detect him in scoundrelism ; but I know not what 
right any of you have to interfere with my choice of 
my company. If any one thought I had injured 
him, he would have done weU to ask an explanation 
in a more private manner. As it is, I fairly own lliat 
though I like many of you very much, and have long 
done so, I think William Clerk well worth you all 
put together." The senior in the chair was wise 
enough to laugh, and the evening passed off without 
further disturbance. 

As one effect of his office education, Scott soon 
began to preserve in regular files the letters addressed 
to him; and from the style and tone of such letters, 
as Mr Southey observes in his Life of Cowper, a 
man's character may often be gathered even more 
surely than from those written by himself. The first 
series of any considerable extent in his collection, in* 
eludes letters dated as far back as 1786, and proceeds, 
with not many interruptions, down beyond the period 
when his fame had been established. I regret, that 
from the delicate nature of the transactions chiefly 
dwelt upon in the earlier of these communications, I 
dare not make a free use of them; but I feel it my 
duty to record the strong impression they have leh 
on my own mind of high generosity of affection, 
coupled with calm judgment, and perseverance in 
well-doing, on the part of the stripling Scott. To 



EA.RLT CORRESPONDENCE. 215 

these indeed every line in the coUection bears pr^- 
nant testimony. A young gMiUeman, boni of good 
fsmily, and heir to a toLerMe fortune, is sent to 
Edinburgh College, and is seen partaking, along with 
Scott, through several apparently happy and careless 
years, of the studies and amusements of which the 
reader may by this time have formed an adequate no- 
tion. By degrees, from iJie usual lic^oce of his equal 
comrades, he sinks into habits of a looser description 
— becomes reddess, contracts debts, irritates his own 
fiunily ahnost beyond hope <^ reconciliation, is virtu- 
ally cast off by them, runs away from Scotland, forms 
a marriage far below his condition in a remote part 
of the sister kingdom — and, when the poor girl has 
made him a fiUiier, then first begins to open his eyes 
to the full consequences of his mad career. He ap- 
peals to Scott, by this time in his dghteenth year, 
*' as the truest and noblest of friends,'' who had given 
him '^ the earliest and tibe strongest warnings," had 
assisted him " the most generously throughout all his 
wanderings and distresses," and will not now abandon 
him in his ^' penitent lowliness of misery," the result 
of his seeing '' virtue and innocence involved in the 
punishment of his errors." I find Scott obtaining the 
slow and reluctant assistance of his own careful father, 
— who had long before observed this youth's way- 
ward disposition, and often cautioned his son against 
the connexion, — to intercede with the unfortunate 



216 XIFE OF Sm WALTER SCOTT. 

wanderer's family, and procure, if possible, some 
mitigation of their sentence. The result is, that he 
is furnished with the scanty means of removing him- 
self to a distant colony, where he spends several 
years in the drudgery of a very humble occupation, 
but by degrees estabHshes for himself a new character, 
which commands the anxious interest of strangers; — 
and I find these strangers, particularly a benevolent 
and venerable clergyman, addressing, on his behalf, 
without his privacy, the young person, as yet un- 
known to the world, whom the object of their concern 
had painted to them as ^^ uniting the warm feelings of 
youth with the sense of years" — whose hair he had, 
*' from the day he left England, worn next his heart." 
Just at the time when this appeal reached Scott, he 
hears that his exiled friend's father has died suddenly, 
and after all intestate; he has actually been taking 
steps to ascertain the truth of the case at the moment 
when the American despatch is laid on his table. I 
leave the reader to guess with what pleasure Scott 
has to communicate the intelligence that his repent- 
ant and reformed friend may return to take posses** 
sion of his inheritance. The letters before me contain 
touching pictures of their meeting — of Walter's first 
visit to the ancient hall, where a happy family are 
now assembled — and of the affectionately respectful 
sense which his friend retained ever afterwards of 
all that he had done for him in the season of his 



EARLY COBKESPONDENCE. 217 

struggles. But what a grievous loss is Scott's part 
of this correspondence! I find the comrade over and 
over again expressing his admiration of the letters 
in which Scott described to him his early tours both 
in the Highlands and the Border dales : I find him 
prophesying from them, as early as 1789? " one day 
your pen will make you famous," — and already, in 
1790, urging him to concentrate his ambition on a 
" history of the clans."* 

This young gentleman appears to have had a de- 
cided turn for literature; and, though in his earlier 
epistles he makes no allusion to Scott as ever dabbling 
in rhyme, he often inserts verses of his own, some of 
which are not without merit. There is a long let- 
ter in doggrel, dated 1788, descriptive of a ramble 
from Edinburgh to Carlisle — of which I may quote 
the opening lines, as a sample of the simple habits of 
these young people: — 

** At four in the moming, I won't be too sure, 
Yet, if right I remember me, that was the hour. 
When with Fergusson, Ramsay, and Jones, sir, and you. 
From Auld Reekie I southward my route did pursue. 
But two of the dogs (yet God bless them, I said) 
Grew tired^ and but set me half way to Lasswade, 
While Jones, you, and I, Wat, went on without flutter. 
And at Symonds*s feasted on good bread and butter ; 

* All Scott's letters to the friend here alluded to are said to 
have perished in an accidental fire. 



218 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

\ll>ere I, wanting a sucpenee, you lugged out a shiUing, 
And paid for me too, though I was most unwilling. 
We parted — be sure I was ready to snivel — 
Jones and you to go home — I to go to the devil." 

In a letter of later date, describing the adventurer's 
captiyation with the cottage maiden whom he after- 
wards married, there at some lines of a very different 
stamp. This coufdet at least seems to me exquisite : — 

" Lowly beaut}', dear friend, beams with primitive grace, 
And 'tis innoeence self plays the rogue in her face.** 

I find in another letter of this cdleetion — and it 
is among the first of the series — the following pas- 
sage: — " Your Quixotism, dear Walter, was highly 
characteristic From the description of the blooming 
fair, as she appeared when she lowered her manteau 
vertf I am hopeful you have not dropt the acquaint- 
ance. At least I am certain some of our more rakish 
friends would have been glad enough of such an in- 
troduction." This hint I cannot help connecting 
with the first scene of The Lady Green Mantle in 
Regauntlet; but indeed I could easily trace many 
more coincidences between these letters and that 
novel, though at the same time I have no sort of 
doubt that William Clerk was, in the main, Da/rsie 
Latimer^ while Scott himself unquestionably sat for 
his own picture in young Alan Fairford, 

The allusion to " our more rakish friends" is in 



THE liADY GREEN MANTLE. 219 

keeping* with the whole strain of this juTenile corre- 
spondence. Thronghout there occurs no coarse or 
even jocular sugge^ion as to the conduct of Scott in 
that particular, as ;to which most youths of his tiwn 
age are so apt to lay up stores of self-reproach. In 
this season of hot and impetuous hlood he may not 
have escaped quite hlamelees, hut I hare the con- 
current testimony of all the most intimate among 
his suryiving associates, that he was remarkahly free 
from such indiscretions; that while his high sense of 
honour shielded him from the remotest dream of 
tampering with female innocence, he had axi instinc- 
tive delicacy ahout him which made him recoil with 
utter disgust from low and vulgar dehaucheries. His 
friends, I have heard more than one of them confess, 
used often to rally him on the coldness of his nature. 
By degrees they discovered that he had from almost 
the dawn of the passions, cherished a secret attach- 
ment, which continued, through all the most perilous, 
stage of Hfe, to act as a romantic charm in safeguard 
of virtue. This—- (however he may have disguised 
the story hy mixing it up with the Quixotic adven- 
ture of the damsel in the Green Mantle)-^ this was 
the early and innocent affection to which we owe the 
tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet, hut of the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel, and of Rokehy. In all of 
these works the heroine has certain distinctive fe&* 



220 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

tures, drawn from one and the same haunting dream 
of his manly adolescence. 

It was about 1790, according to Mr William Clerk, 
that Scott was observed to lay aside that careless- 
ness, not to say slovenliness, as to dress, which used 
to furnish matter for joking at the beginning of their 
acquaintance. He now did himself more justice in 
these little matters, became fond of mixing in general 
female society, and, as his friend expresses it, " began 
to set up for a squire of dames." 

His personal appearance at this time was not 
unengaging. A lady of high rank, who well re- 
members him in the Old Assembly Rooms, says, 
" Young Walter Scott was a comely creature." He 
had outgrown the sallowness of early ill health, and 
had a fresh brilliant complexion. His eyes were 
clear, open, and well set, with a changeful radiance, 
to which teeth of the most perfect regularity and 
whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble ex- 
panse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole 
aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere fea- 
tures. His smile was always delightful ; and I can 
easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness 
and gravity, with playful innocent hilarity and hu- 
mour in the expression, as being well calculated to 
fix a fair lady's eye. His figure, excepting the ble- 
mish in one limb, must in those days have been 



FIRST LOVE. 221 

eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual 
standard, it was cast in the very mould of a young 
Hercules ; the head set on with singular grace, the 
throat and chest after the truest model of the an- 
tique, the hands delicately finished ; the whole out- 
line that of extraordinary vigour, without as yet a 
touch of clumsiness. When he had acquired a little 
facility of manner, his conversation must have been 
such as could have dispensed with any exterior ad- 
vantages, and certainly brought swifb forgiveness for 
the one unkindness of nature. I have heard him, in 
talking of this part of his life, say, with an arch 
simplicity of look and tone which those who were 
familiar with him can fill in for themselves — ' It 
was a proud night with me when I first fouiid that 
a pretty young woman could think it worth her 
while to sit and talk with me, hour after hour, in 
a corner of the ball-room, while all the world were 
capering in our view.' 

. I believe, however, that the " pretty young wo- 
man" here specially alluded to had occupied his 
attention long before he ever appeared in the Edin- 
burgh Assembly Rooms, or any of his friends took 
note of him as ^' setting up for a squire of dames.'* 
I have been told that their acquaintance began in 
the Greyfriars' churchyard, where rain beginning to 
fall one Sunday as the congregation were> dispersing, 



222 MFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Scott happened to otfer his umbrella, and the tender 
being accepted, so escorted her to her residence, 
which proved to be at no great distance from his 
own. To return from church together had, it 
seems, grown into something like a custom, before 
they met in society, Mrs Scott being of the party. 
It then appeared that she and the lady's mother had 
been companions in their youth, though, both living 
secludedly, they had scarcely seen each other for 
many years ; and the two matrons now renewed 
their former intercourse. But no acquaintance ap- 
pears to have existed between the fathers of the 
young people, until things had advanced in appear- 
ance farther tiban met the approbation of the good 
Clerk to the Signet. 

Being aware that the young lady, who was very 
highly connected, had prospects of fortune far above 
his son's, the upright and honourable man conceived 
it his duty to give her parents warning that he ob- 
served a degree of intimacy which, if allowed to go 
on, might involve the parties in future pain and dis- 
appointment. He had heard his son talk of a con- 
templated excursion to the part of the country in 
which his neighbour's estates lay, and not doubting 
that Walter's real object was different from that 
which he announced, introduced himself with a frank 
statement that he wished no such ai&ir to proceed 



FIRST LOVE. 223 

without the express saaction of those most interested 
in the happiness of persons as yet too young to cal- 
eolate consequences for themselves. The northern 
Baronet had heard nothing of the young apprentice's 
intended excursion^ and appeared to treat the whole 
husiness very lightly. He thanked Mr Scott for his 
scrupulous attention — but added, that he believed he 
was mistaken ; and this paternal interference^ which 
Walter did not hear of till long afterwards, produced 
no change in his relations with the object of his 
growing attachment. 

I have neither the power nor the wish to give in 
detail the sequel of this story. It is sufficient to 
say, that after he had through several long years 
nourished the dream of an ultimate union with this 
lady, his hopes terminated in her being married to a 
gentleman of the highest character, to whom some 
affectionate allusions occur in one of the greatest of 
his works, and who lived to act the part of a most 
generous friend to his early rival throughout the 
anxieties and distresses of 1826 and 1827. I have 
said enough for my purpose — which was only to 
render intelligible a few allusions in the letters which 
I shall by and by have to introduce ; but I may add, 
that I have no doubt this unfortunate passion, be- 
sides one good effect already adverted to^ had a 
powerful influence in nerving Scott's mind for the 



224 I.IFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

sedulous diligence with which he pursued his pros- 
per legal studies, as described in his Memoir, during 
the two or three years that preceded his call to the 
bar. 



E08EBANK. 225 



CHAPTER VI. 

lUustrations continued — Studies for the Bar — 
Excursion to Northumberhmd — Letter on 
Fhdden Field— Call to the Bar. 

1790-1792. 

The two following" letters may sufficiently illustrate 
the writer's everyday existence in the autumn of 
1790. The first, addressed to his ^us Achates, 
has not a few indications of the vein of humour from 
which he afterwards drew so largely in his novels ; 
and indeed, even in his last days, he delighted to tell 
the story of the Jedburgh bailies' boots. 

" To William Clerk, Esq., at John Clerics, Esq. 
ofEldiuy Princess Street, Edinburgh. 

** Rosebank, 6th August 1790. 

« Dear William, 

" Here am I, the weather, according to your 
phrase, most bitchiferous; the Tweed, within twenty 
VOL. I.. p 



226 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

yards of the window at which I am writing, swelled 
from bank to brae, and roaring like thunder. It is 
pa3dng you but a poor compliment to tell you 1 
waited for such a day to perform my promise of 
writing, but you must consider that it is the point 
here to reserve such within -doors employment as 
we think most agreeable for bad weather, which in 
the country always wants something to help it away. 
In fair weather we are far from wanting amusement, 
which at present is my business; on the contrary, 
every fair day has some plan of pleasure annexed to 
it, in so much that I can hardly believe I have been 
here above two days, so swiftly does the time pass 
away. You will ask how it is employed? Why, 
negatively, I read no civil law. Heineccius and his 
fellow worthies have ample time to gather a vener- 
able coat of dust, which they merit by their dulness. 
As to my positive amusements, besides riding, fish- 
ing, and the other usual sports of the country, I 
often spend an hour or two in the evening in shoot- 
ing herons, which are numerous on this part of the 
river. To do this I have no farther to go than 
the bottom of our garden, which literally hangs over 
the river. When you fire at a bird, she always 
crosses the river, and when again shot at with ball, 
usually returns to your side, and will cross in this 
way several times before she takes wing. This fur- 
nishes fine sport ; nor are they easily shot, as you 



ROSEBANK 1790. 227 

never can get very near them. The intervals be- 
tween their appearing is spent very agreeably in 
eating gooseberries. 

'^ Yesterday was St James's Fair, a day of great 
business. There was a great show of black cattle 
— I mean of ministers; the narrowness of their 
stipends here obliges many of them to enlarge their 
incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, 
in my opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor 
can the farmer be supposed to entertain any great 
reverence for the ghostly advice of a pastor (they 
literally deserve the epithet), who perhaps the day 
before overreached him in a bargain. I would not 
have you to suppose there are no exceptions to this 
character, but it would serve most of them. I had 
been fishing with my uncle. Captain Scott, on the 
Teviot, and returned through the ground where the 
Fair is kept. The servant was waiting there with 
our horses, as we were to ride the water. Lucky it 
was that it was so ; for just about that time the 
magistrates of Jedburgh, who preside there, began 
their solemn procession through the Fair. For the 
greater dignity upon this occasion, they had a pair 
of boots among three men — ». e^ as they ride three 
in a rank, the outer legs of those personages who 
formed the outside, as it may be called, of the pro- 
cession, were each clothed in a boot. This and 
several other incongruous appearances, were thrown 



228 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

in the teeth of those cavaliers by the Kelso popu- 
lace, and, by the assistance of whisky, parties were 
soon inflamed to a very tight battle, one of that kind 
which, for distinction sake, is called royal. It was 
not without great difficulty that we extricated our* 
selves from the confusion ; and had we been on foot, 
we might have been trampled down by these fierce 
Jedburghians, who charged like so many troopers. 
We were spectators of the combat from an emi- 
nence, but peace was soon after restored, which 
made the older warriors regret the effeminacy of 
the age, as, regularly, it ought to have lasted till 
night. Two lives were lost, I mean of horses; 
indeed, had you seen them, you would rather have 
wondered that they were able to bear their masters 
to the scene of action, than that they could not 
carry them off.* 

*< I am ashamed to read over this sheet of non- 

* Mr Andrew Shortrede (one of a family often mentioned in 
these Memoirs) says, in a letter of November 1838 — ** The 
joke of the one pair of boots to three pair of legs, was so unpa- 
latable to the honest burghers of Jedburgh, that they have suf- 
fered the ancient privilege of ' riding the Fair,' as it was called 
(during which ceremony the inhabitants of Kelso were compelled 
to shut up their shops as on a holiday), to fall into disuse. Huoy, 
the runaway forger, a native of Kelso, availed himself of the 
calumny in a clever squib on the subject : — 

' The outside man had each a boot, 
The three had but a pair.' " 



KiPPiLA w — 1790. 229 

sense, so excuse inaccuracies. Remember me to the 
lads of the Literary, those of the chib in particular. 
I wrote Irving'. Remember my most respectful 
compliments to Mr and Mrs Clerk and family, par- 
ticularly James ; when you write, let me know how 
he did when you heard of him. Imitate me in 
writing a long letter, but not in being long in wri- 
ting it. Direct to me at Miss Scott'% Garden, Kelso. 
My letters lie there for me, as it saves their being 
sent down to Rosebank. The carrier puts up at the 
Grassmarket, and goes away on Wednesday fore* 
noon. Yours, Waltee Scott." 

The next letter is dated from a house at which I 
have often seen the writer in his latter days. Kip- 
pilaw, situated about five or six miles behind Abbots-^ 
ford, on the high ground between the Tweed and the 
Water of Avle, is the seat of an ancient laird of the 
clan Kerr, but was at this time tenanted by the fa- 
mily of Walter's brother -apprentice, James Ramsay, 
who afterwards realized a fortune in the civil service 
of Ceylon. 

« To William Clerk, Esq. 

''Kippilaw, Sept. 3, 1790. 
« Dear Clerk, 

" I am now writing from the country habitation 

of our friend Ramsay, where I have been spending a 



230 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

week as pleasantly as ever I spent one in my life. 
Imagine a commodious old house, pleasantly situated 
amongst a knot of venerable elms, in a fine sporting, 
open country, and only two miles from an excellent 
water for trouts, inhabited by two of the best old 
ladies (Ramsa/s aunts), and three as pleasant young 
ones (his sixers) as any person could wish to con- 
verse with — and you will have some idea of Kip- 
pilaw. James and I wander about, fish, or look for 
hares, the whole day, and at night laugh, chat, and 
play round games at cards. Such is the fatherland 
in which I have been living for some days past, and 
which I leave to-night or to-morrow. This day is 
very bad ; notwithstanding which, James has sallied 
out to make some calls, as he spon l^ves the coun- 
try. . I have a great mind to trouble him with the 
care of this. 

" And now for your letter, the receipt of which 
I have not, I think, yet acknowledged, though I am 
much obliged to you for it. I dare say you would 
relish your jaunt to Pennycuick very much, espe- 
cially considering the solitary desert of Edinburgh, 
from which it relieved you. By the by, know, O 
thou devourer of grapes, who contemnest the vulgar 
gooseberry, that thou art not singular in thy devour- 
ing — nee tarn aversus equos sol jungit ah urhe 
(Kelsoniand scilicet) — my uncle being the lawful 
possessor of a vinery, measuring no less than twenty- 



KIPPILAW. 231 

four feet by twelve, the contents of which come often 
in my way; and, according to the proverb, that 
enough is as good as a feast, are equally acqeptable 
as if they came out of the most extensive vineyard 
in France. I cannot, however, equal your boast of 
breakfasting, dining, and supping on them. As for 
the civilians * — peace be with them, and may the 
dust lie light upon their heads — they deserve this 
prayer in return for those sweet slumbers which 
their benign influence infuses into their readers. I 
fear I shall too soon be forced to disturb them, for 
some of our family being now at Kelso, I am under 
the agonies lest I be obliged to escort them into 
town. The only pleasure I -shall reap by this is 
that of asking you how* you do, and, perhaps, the 
solid advantage of completing our studies before the 
College sits down. Employ, therefore, your morn- 
ings in slumber while you can, for soon it will be 
chased from your eyes. I plume myself on my 
sagacity with regard to C. J. Fox.f I always fore- 
told you would tire of him — a vile brute. I have 
not yet forgot the narrow escape of my fingers. I 
rejoice at James's :( intimacy with Miss Menzies. She 
promised to turn out a fine girl, has a fine fortune, 
and could James get her, he might sing, ' I'll go 

• Books on Civil Law. 

f A tame fox of Mr Qerk's, which he soon dismissed. 

i Mr James Qerk, R.N. 



232 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

no more to sea, to sea.' Give my love to him when 
you write. — * God preserve us, what a scrawl!* 
says one of the ladies just now, in admiration at the 
expedition with which I scrihhle. Well — I was 
never able in my life to do any thing with what is 
called gravity and deliberation. 

<< I dined two days ago tSte et tete with Lord 
Buchan. Heard a history of all his ancestors whom 
he has hung round his chinmey-piece. From count- 
ing of pedigrees, good Lord deliver us! He is 
thinking of erecting a monument to Thomson. He 
frequented Dryburgh much in my grandfather's time. 
It will be a handsome thing. As to your scamp of 
a boy, I saw nothing of him ; but the face is enough 
to condemn there. I have seen a man flogg'd for 
Stealing spirits on the sole information of his nose. 
Remember me respectfully to all your family. 
<< Believe me yours affectionately, 

Walteb Scott." 

After his return from the scene of these meny 
doings, he writes as follows to his kind uncle. The 
reader will see that, in the course of the preceding 
year, he had announced his early views of the origin 
of what is called the feudal system, in a paper read 
before the Literary Society. He, in the succeeding 
winter, chose the same subject for an essay, submit- 
ted to Mr Dugald Stewart, whose prelections on 



ESSAY ON THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, &C. 233 

ethics he was then attending. Some time later he 
again illustrated the same opinions more at length in 
a disquisition before the Speculative Society; and, 
indeed, he always adhered to them. One of the last 
historical books he read, before leaving Abbotsford 
for Malta in 1831, was Colonel Tod's interesting 
account of Rajasthan ; and I well remember the de- 
light he expressed on finding his views confirmed, as 
they certainly are in a very striking manner, by the 
philosophical soldier's details of the structure of so- 
ciety in that remote region of the East* 

" To Captain Robert Scott, Roaebanhy Keho* 

" Edinburgh, September 30, 1790. 
" Dear Uncle, 

" We arrived here without any accident about 
five o'clock on Monday evening. The good weather 
made our journey pleasant. I have been attending 
to your commissions here, and find that the last 
volume of Dodsley's Annual Register published is 
that for 1787» which I was about to send you ; but 
the bookseller I frequent had not one in boards^ 
though he expects to procure one for me. There is 
a new work of the same title and size, on the same 
plan, which, being published every year regularly, 
has almost cut out Dodsley's, so that this last is ex- 
pected to stop altogether. You will let me know if 



234 LIFE OF SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

you would wish to have the new work, which is a 
good one, will join very well with those Yolumes of 
Dodflle/s which you already have, and is published 
up to the present year. Byron's Narrative is not 
yet published, but you shall have it whenever it 
comes out. 

" Agreeable to your permission, I send you the 
scroll copy of an essay on the origin of the feudal 
system, written for the Literary Society last year. 
As you are kind enough to interest yourself in my 
style and manner of writing, I thought you might 
like better to see it in its original state, than one on 
the polishing of which more time had been bestowed. 
You will see that the intention and attempt of the 
essay is principally to controvert two propositions 
laid down by the writers on the subject ; — 1st, That 
the system was invented by the Lombards; and, 
2dly, that its foundation depended on the king's 
being acknowledged the sole lord of all the lands in 
the country, which he afterwards distributed to be 
held by military tenures. I have endeavoured to 
assign it a more general origin, and to prove that it 
proceeds upon principles common to all nations when 
placed in a certain situation. I am afraid the matter 
will but poorly reward the trouble you will find in 
reading some parts. I hope, however, you will make 
out enough* to enable you to favour me with your 
sentiments upon its faults. There is none whose 



U 



DUGALB Stewart's class. 235 

advice I prize so high, for there is none in whose 
judgment I can so much confide, or who has shown 
me so much kindness. 

^< I also send, as amusement for an idle half hour, a 
copy of the regulations of our Society, some of which 
will, I think, he favoured with your approhation. 

*^ My mother and sister join in compliments to 
aunt and you, and also in thanks for the attentions 
and hospitality which they experienced at Rosehank. 
And I am ever your affectionate nephew, 

Walter Scott. 

«( P. S. — If you continue to want a mastiff, I think 
I can procure you one of a good hreed, and send him 
by the carrier*" 

While attending Mr Dugald Stewart's class, in 
the winter of 1790-1, Scott produced, in compliance 
with the usual custom of ethical students, several 
essays besides that to which I have already made an 
allusion, and which was, I believe, entitled, " On the 
Manners and Customs of the Northern Nations." 
But this essay it was that first attracted, in any par- 
ticular manner, his Professor's attention. Mr Robert 
Ainslie, well known as the friend and fellow-traveller 
of Burns, happened to attend Stewart the same ses- 
sion, and remembers his saying, e^ cathedrd^ '* The 
author of this paper shows much knowledge of his 



236 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

subject, and a great taste for such researches." Scott 
became, before the close of the. session, a frequent 
visitor in Mr Stewart's family, and an affectionate 
intercourse was maintained between them through 
their after-lives. 

Let me here set down a little story which most of 
his friends must have heard him tell of the same 
period. While attending Dugald Stewart's lectures 
on moral philosophy, Scott happened to sit frequently 
beside a modest and diligent youth, considerably his 
senior, and obviously of very humble condition. Their 
acquaintance soon became rather intimate, and he 
occasionally made this new friend the companion of 
his country walks, but as to his parentage and place 
of residence he alwajrs preserved total sUence. One 
day towards the end of the session, as Scott was re- 
turning to Edinbui^h from a sohtary ramble, his eye 
was arrested by a singularly venerable Bhtegown^ a 
beggar of the Edie Ochiltree order, who stood prop- 
ped on his stick, with his hat in his hand, but silent 
and motionless, at one of the outskirts of the city. 
Scott gave the old man what trifle He had in his 
pocket, and passed on his way. Two or three times 
afterwards the same thing happened, and he had 
begun to consider the Bluegown as one who had 
established a claim on his bounty : when one day he 
fell in with him as he was walking with his humble 
student. Observing some confusion in his com- 



DUGALD STEWABT's CLASS. 237 

panion's manner as he saluted his pensioner, and 
bestowed the usual benefaction, he could not help 
saying, after they had proceeded a few yards further, 
" Do you know any thing to the old man's discredit ?'* 
Upon which the youth burst into tears, and cried, 
" O no, sir, God forbid — but I am a poor wretch to 
be ashamed to speak to him — he is my own father. 
He has enough laid by to serve for his own old days, 
but he stands bleaching his head in the wind, that he 
may get the means of paying for my education." Com- 
passionating the young man's situation, Scott soothed 
his weakness, and kept his secret, but by no means 
broke off the acquaintance. Some months had elapsed 
before he again met the Bluegown — it was in a re- 
tired place, and the old man begged to speak a word 
with him. " I find, sir," he said, " that you have been 
very kind to my Willie. He had often spoke of it 
before I saw you together. Will you pardon such a 
liberty, and give me the honour and pleasure of see- 
ing you under my poor roof? To-morrow is Satur- 
day, will you come at two o'clock ? Willie has not 
been very well, and it would do him meikle good to 
see youi: face." His curiosity, besides better feelings, 
wafl touched, and he accepted this strange invita- 
tion. The appointed hour found him within sight of 
a sequestered little cottage, near St Leonard's — 
the hamlet where he has placed the residence of 
his David Deans. His fellow-student, pale and ema- 



238 lAFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

elated from recent sickness, was seated on a stone 
bench by the door, looking out for his coming, and 
introduced him into a not untidy cabin, where the 
old man, divested of his professional garb, was di- 
recting the last vibrations of a leg of mutton that 
hung by a hempen cord before the fire. The mutton 
was excellent — so were the potatoes and whiskey ; 
and Scott returned home from an entertaining con- 
versation, in which, besides telling many queer stories 
of his own life — and he had seen service in his 
youth — the old man more than once used an ex- 
pression, which was long afterwards put into the 
mouth of Dominie Samson's mother : — " Please God 
I may Hve to see my bairn wag his head in a pulpit 
yet." 

Walter could not help teUing all this the same 
night to his mother, and added, that he would fain 
see his poor friend obtain a tutor's place in some 
gentleman's family. '^ Dinna speak to your father 
about it," said the good lady ; " if it had been a 
shoulder he might have thought less, but he will 
say the jigot was a sin. I'll see what I can do." 
Mrs Scott made her inquiries in her own way among 
the Professors, and having satisfied herself as to 
the young man's character, applied to her favourite 
minister, Dr Erskine, whose influence soon procured 
such a situation as had been suggested for him, in 
the north of Scotland. " And thenceforth," said Sir 



THE SPECULATIVE SOCIETY. 239 

Walter, " I lost sight of my friend — but let us hope 
he made out his curriculum at Aberdeen, and is now 
wagging his head where the fine old carle wished to 
see him." * 

On the 4th January 1791} Scott was admitted a 
member of The Speculative Society^ where it had, 
long before, been the custom of those about to be 
called to the bar, and those who after assuming the 
gown were left in possession of leisure by the soli- 
citors, to train or exercise themselves in the arts 
of elocution and debate. From time to time each 
member produces an essay, and his treatment of his 
subject is then discussed by the conclave. Scott's 
essays were, for November 1791> " On the Origin of 
the Feudal System ;" for the 14th February 1792, 
" On the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems ;" and on 
the 11th December of the same year, he read one 
"On the Origin of the Scandinavian Mythology." 
The selection of these subjects shows the course of 
his private studies and predilections ; but he appears, 
from the minutes, to have taken his fair share in the 
ordinary debates of the Society, — and spoke, in the 

* The reader will find a story not unlike this in the Introduc- 
tion to the "Antiquary/' 1830. When I first read that note, I 
asked him why he had altered so many circumstances from the 
usual oral edition of his anecdote. ** Nay/' said he, " hoth stories 
may be true, and why should I be always luring in myself, when 
what happened to another of our class would serve equally well 
for the purpose I had in view ? " I regretted the Ug of mutton. 



240 LIFE OP SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

spring of I79I9 on thise questionB, which all belong 
to the established text-book for juvenile speculation 
in Edinburgh: — << Ought any permanent support to 
be provided for the poor?" " Ought there to be an 
established religion?" <^ Is attainder and corruption 
of blood ever a proper punishment ?" '^ Ought the 
public e^cpenses to be defrayed by lev}ing the amount 
directly upon the people, or is it expedient to con- 
tract national debt for that purpose?" " Was the 
execution of Charles I. justifiable?" " Should the 
slave-trade be abolished?" In the next session, pre- 
vious to his call to the bar, he spoke in the debates 
of which these were the theses: — " Has the belief 
in a future state been of advantage to mankind, or 
is it ever likely to be so?" " Is it for the interest 
of Britain to maintain what is called the balance of 
Europe?" and again on the eternal question as to 
the hte of King Charles I., which, by the way, was 
thus set up for re-discussion on a motion by Walter 
Scott. 

He took, for several winters, an ardent interest in 
this society. Very soon after his admission (18th 
January 1791)) he was elected their librarian; and 
in the November following, he became also their 
secretary and treasurer; all which appointments 
indicate the reliance placed on his careful habits of 
business, the fruit of his chamber education. The 
minutes kept in his handwriting attest the strict 



^ THE SPECULATIVE SOCIETT# 241 

regularity of his attention to the small affairs, literary 
and financial, of the club; but they show also, as do 
all his early letters, a strange carelessness in spelling. 
His constant good temper softened the asperities of 
debate; while his multifarious lore, and the quaint 
humour with which he enlivened its display, made 
him more a favourite as a speaker than some whose 
powers of rhetoric were far above his. 

Lord Jeffrey remembers being struck, the first 
night he spent at the Speculative, with the singular 
appearance of the secretary, who sat gravely at the 
bottom of the table in a huge woollen night-cap; 
and when the president took the chair, pleaded a bad 
toothach as his apology for coming into that worship- 
ful assembly in such a " portentous machine." He 
read that night an essay on ballads, which so much 
interested the new member, that he requested to be 
introduced to him. Mr Jeffrey called on him next 
evening, and found him ^< in a small den, on the sunk 
floor of his father's house in George's Square, sur- 
sounded with dingy books," from which they adjourned 
to a tavern, and supped together. Such was the com- 
mencement of an acquaintance, which by degrees 
ripened into friendship, between the two most distin 
guished men of letters whom Edinburgh producea in 
their time. I may add here the description of that 
early den, with which I am favoured by a lady of 
Scott's family: — " Walter had soon begun to coDect 

VOL. L Q 



242 UFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

out-of-the-way things of all sorts. He had more 
books than shelves; a small painted cabinet, with 
Scotch and Roman coins in it, and so forth. A clay- 
more and Lochaber axe, given him by old Inyemahyle, 
mounted guard on a little print of Prince Charlie; 
and Broughton's Saucer was hooked up against the 
wall below it." Such was the germ of the magni- 
ficent library and museum of Abbotsford; and such 
were the '^ new realms" in which he, on taking pos- 
session, had arranged his little paraphernalia about 
him <^ with all the feelings of novelty and liberty.** 
Since those days, the habits of life in Edinburgh, as 
elsewhere, have undergone many changes : and the 
*^ convenient parlour," in which Scott first showed 
Jeffrey his collections of minstrelsy, is now, in all 
probability, thought hardly good enough for a me- 
nial's sleeping room. 

But I have forgotten to explain Brottghton*s Sau^ 
cer. We read of Mr Saunders Fairford, that though 
*^ an elder of the kirk, and of course zealous for Kin^ 
George and the Government," yet, having " many 
clients and connexions of business among families of 
opposite political tenets, he was particularly cautious 
to use all the conventional phrases which the civility 
of the time had devised as an admissible mode of 
language betwixt the two parties: Thus he spoke 
sometimes of the Chevalier, but never either of the 
Prince^ which would have been sacrificing his own 



BROUGHT OM'S SAUCER. 243 

principles, or of the Pretender, which would have 
been offensire to those of others: Again, he usually 
designated the Rebellion as the affair of 1745, and 
spoke of any one engaged in it as a person who had 
been out at a certain period — so that, on the whole, 
he was much liked and respected on all sides."* All 
this was true of Mr Walter Scott, W.S.; but I have 
often heard his son tell an anecdote of him which he 
dwelt on with particular satisfaction, as illustrative 
of the man, and of the difficult time through which 
he had lived. 

Mrs Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one 
autumn by the regular appearance, at a certain hour 
every evening, of a sedan chair, to deposit a person 
carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immedi- 
ately ushered into her husband's private room, and 
commonly remained with him there until long afW 
the usual bed-time of this orderly family. Mr Scott 
answered her repeated enquiries with a vagueness 
,which irritated the lady's feelings more and more ; 
until, at last, she could bear the thing no longer; but 
one evening, just as she heard the bell ring as for the 
stranger's" chair to carry him off, she made her ap- 
pearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in 
her hand, observing, that she thought the gentlemen 
had sat so long they would be the better of a dish of 
tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some for 

* Redgauntlet, toI. i. p. 244. 



244 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distin- 
guished appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the 
lady, and accepted a cup; but her husband knit his 
brows, and refused very coldly to partake the refresh- 
ment. A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew — 
and Mr Scott lifting up the window-sash, took the 
cup, which he had left empty on the table, and tossed 
it out upon the pavement. The lady exclaimed for 
her china, but was put to silence by her husband's 
saying, <^ I can forgive your little curiosity, madam, 
but you must pay the penalty. I may admit into my 
house, on a piece of business, persons wholly un- 
worthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neithei" 
lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr Murray of 
Broughton's." 

This was the unhappy man who, after attending 
Prince Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout 
the greater part of his expedition, condescended to 
redeem his own life and fortune by bearing evidence 
against the noblest of his late master's adherents, 
when 

** Pitied by gentle hearts Kilmarnock died — 
The brave, Babnerino, were on thy gide.'* 

When confronted with Sir John Douglas of Kel- 
head (ancestor of the Marquess of Queensberry), 
before the Privy Council in St James's, the prisoner 
was asked, " Do you know this witness?" " Not 



LETTER ON FLODDEN FTEU). 245 

I," answered Douglas; ^^ I once knew a person who 
bore the designation of Murray of Broughton — but 
that was a gentleman and a man of honour, and one 
that could hold up his head!" 

The saucer belonging to Broughton's tea-cup had 
been preserved; and Walter, at a very early period, 
made prize of it. One can fancy young Alan Fair- 
ford pointing significantly to the reHc when Mr 
Saunders was vouchsafing him one of his customary 
lectures about listening with unseemly sympathy to 
<* the blawing, bleezing stories which the Hieland 
gentlemen told of those troublous times/'* 

The following letter is the only one of the autumn 
of 1791 that has reached my hands. It must be read 
with particular interest for its account of Scott's 
first visit to Flodden field, destined to be celebrated 
seventeen years afterwards in the very noblest speci- 
men of his numbers : — 



*' To William Clerks Esq. Princes Street. 
Edinburgh. 

** Northumberland, 26th August 1791. 
" Dear Clerk, 

^^ Behold a letter from the mountains, for I am 

very snugly settled here, in a farmer's house, about 

six miles from Wooler, in the very centre of the 

* Redgauntlet, vol. i. p. 142. 



246 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Cheviot hills, in one of the wildest and most ro- 
mantic situations which your imagination, fertile upon 
the subject of cottages, ever suggested. And what 
the deuce are you about there ? methinks I hear you 
say. Why, sir, of all things in the world — drink- 
ing goat's whey — not that I stand in the least need 
of it, but my uncle haying a slight cold, and being 
a little tired of home, asked me last Sunday evening 
if I would like to go with him to Wooler, and I 
answering in the affirmative, next morning's sun 
beheld us on our journey, through a pass in the 
Cheviots, upon the back of two special nags, and 
man Thomas behind with a portmanteau, and two 
fishing rods fastened across his back, much in the 
style of St Andrew's Cross. Upon reaching Wooler 
we found the accommodations so bad that we were 
forced to use some interest to get lodgings here, 
where we are most delightfully appointed indeed. 
To add to my satisfaction, we are amidst places re- 
nowned by the feats of former days; each hill is 
crowned with a tower, or camp, or cairn, and in no 
situation can you be near more fields of battle : 
Flodden, Otterbum, Chevy Chase, Ford Castle, 
Chillingham Castle, Copland Castle, and many an- 
other scene of blood, are within the compass of a 
forenoon's ride. Out of the brooks with which these 
hills are intersected, we pull trouts of half a. yard in 
length, as fast as we did the perches from the pond 



LETTER ON FLODDEN FIELD. 247 

at Pennycuick, and we are in the very country of 
muirfowl. 

^' Often as I have wished for your company, I 
never did it more earnestly than when I rode over 
Flodden Edge. I know your taste for these things, 
and could have undertaken to demonstrate, that never 
was an affair more completely bungled than that 
day's work was. Suppose one army posted upon the 
face of a hill, and secured by high grounds projecting 
on each flank, with the river Till in front, a deep 
and still river, winding through a very extensive 
valley called Milfleld Plain, and the only passage 
over it by a narrow bridge, which the Scots artillery, 
from the hill, could in a moment have demolished. 
Add that the English must have hazarded a battle 
while their troops, which were tumultuously levied, 
remained together ; and that the Scots, behind whom 
the country was open to Scotland, had nothing to 
do but to wait for the attack as they were posted. 
Yet did two thirds of the army, actuated by the pev" 
fervidum ingenium Scotoruniy rush down and give 
an opportunity to Stanley to occupy the ground they 
had quitted, by coming over the shoulder of the hill, 
while the other third, under Lord Home, kept their 
ground, and having seen their king and about 10,000 
of their countrymen cut to pieces, retired into Scot- 
land without loss. For the reason of the bridge not 
being destroyed while the English passed, I refer 



248 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

you to Pitscottie, who narrates at large, and ta 
whom I give credit for a most accurate and clear 
description, agreeing perfectly with the ground. 

*< My imcle drinks the whey here, as I do ever 
since I understood it was brought to his bedside 
every morning at six, by a very pretty dairy-maid.. 
So much for my residence ; all the day we shoot, fish, 
walk and ride; dine and sup upon fish struggling 
from the stream, and the most delicious heath-fed 
mutton, barn-door fowls, poys,* milk-cheese, &c, all 
in perfection ; and so much simplicity resides among 
these hills, that a pen, which could write at least, 
was not to be found about the house, though belong- 
ing to a considerable farmer, till I shot the crow 
with whose quill I write this epistle. I wrote to 
Irving before leaving Kelso. Poor fellow, I am 
sure his sister's death must have hurt him much; 
though he makes no noise about feelings, yet still 
streams always run deepest. I sent a message by 
him to Edie,! poor devil, adding my mite of consoc- 
iation to him in his affliction. I pity poor *♦**♦♦, 
who is more deserving of compassion, being his first 
offence. Write soon, and as long as the last; you 
will have Perthshire news I suppose soon. JamieV 
adventure diverted me much. I read it to my uncle, 
who being long in the India service, was afironted. 

* Pies. f Sir A. Fergusson. 



SCOTS LAW liECTUSES. 249 

Kemember me to James when you write, and to all 
your family and friends in general. I send this to 
Kelso — you may address as usual ; my letters will 
be forwarded — adieu — au re voir, 

Walter Scott." 

With the exception of this little excursion, Scott 
appears to have been nailed to Edinburgh during 
this autumn, by that course of legal study, in com- 
pany with Clerk, on which he dwells in his Memoir 
with more satisfaction than on any other passage in 
his early life. He copied out twicer as the Fragment 
tells us, his notes of those lectures of the eminent 
Scots Law professor (Mr Hume), which he speaks 
of in such a high strain of eulogy ; and Mr Irving 
adds, that the second copy, being fairly finished and 
bound into volumes, was presented to his father. 
The old gentleman was highly gratified with this 
performance, not only as a satisfactory proof of his 
son's assiduous attention to the law professor, but 
inasmuch as the lectures a£Porded himself '^ very plea-* 
sant reading for leisure hours." 

Mr Clerk assures me, that nothing could be more 
exact (excepting as to a few petty circumstances in* 
troduced for obvious reasons) than the resemblance 
of the Mr Saunders Fairford of Redgaimtlet to his 
friend's father i-^^^He was a man of business of the 
old school^ moderate in his charges, economical, and 



250 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

eyen niggardly in his expenditure ; strictly honest in 
conducting his own affiiirs and those of his clients ; 
but taught by long experience to be wary and sus- 
picious in observing the motions of others. Punc* 
tual as the clock of St Giles tolled nine" (the hour 
at which the Court of Session meets), " the dapper 
form of the hale old gentleman was seen at the 
threshold of the court hall, or at farthest, at the 
head of the Back Stairs" (the most conyenient ac* 
cess to the Parliament House from George's Square), 
** trimly dressed in a complete suit of snuff-coloured 
brown, with stockings of silk or woollen, as suited 
the weather ; a bob wig and a small cocked hat ; 
shoes blacked as Warren would have blacked them ; 
silver shoe-buckles, and a gold stock-buckle. His 
manners corresponded with his attire, for they were 
scrupulously civil, and not a little formal .... On 
the whole, he was a man much liked and respected, 
though his friends would not have been sorry if he 
had given a dinner more frequently, as his little 
cellar contained some choice old wine, of which, on 
such rare occasions, he was no niggard. The whole 
pleasure of this good old-fashioned man of method, 
besides that which he really felt in the discharge of 
his own daily business, was the hope to see his son 
attain what in the father's eyes was the proudest 
of all distinctions — the rank and fame of a well- 
employed lawyer. Every profession has its peculian 



CALL TO THE BAR. 251 

honours, and his mind was constructed upon so li* 
mited and exclusive a plan, that he valued nothing 
save the objects of ambition which his own pre- 
sented. He would have shuddered at his son's ac- 
quiring the renown of a hero, and laughed with 
scorn at the equally barren laurels of literature ; it 
was by the path of the law alone that he was de- 
sirous to see him rise to eminence ; and the probabi- 
lities of success or disappointment, were the thoughts 
of his father by day, and his dream by night."* 

It is easy to 'imagine the original of this portrait, 
writing to one of his friends, about the end of June 
1792 — << I have the pleasure to tell you that my 
son has passed his private Scots Law examinations 
with good approbation — a great relief to my mind, 
especially as worthy Mr Pest f told me in my ear, 
there was no fear of the " callant,'' as he familiarly 
called him, which gives me great heart. His public 
trials, which are nothing in comparison, save a mere 
form, are to take place, by order of the Honourable 
Dean of Faculty, J on Wednesday first, and on Friday 
he puts on the gown, and gives a bit chack of dinner 

* Redgauntlet, vol. i. p. 243-5. 

f It has been suggested that Pest is a misprint for Peat There 
was an elderly practitioner of the latter name with whom Mr Fair- 
ford must have been well acquainted.-— 1839. 

\ The situation of Dean of Faculty was filled m 1792 by the 
Honourable Henry Erskine, of witty and benevolent memory. 



252 LIFF4 OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

to his friends and acquaintances, as is the custom* 
Your company will be wished for there by more than 
him. — P.S. His thesis is, on the title, ^Depe- 
ricfdo et commodo rei venditcBy and is a very pretty 
piece of Latinity." * 

And all things passed in due order, even as they 
are figured. The real Darsie was present at the 
real Alan Fairford's ^^ bit chack of dinner," and the 
old Clerk of the Signet was very joyous on the oc- 
casion. Scott's thesis was, in fact, on the Title of 
the Pandects, Concerning the disposal of the dead 
bodies of Crifmnals. It was dedicated, I doubt not 
by the careful father's advice, to his friend and neigh- 
bour in George's Square, the coarsely humorous, but 
acute and able, and still well-remembered, Macqueen 
of Braxfield, then Lord Justice- Clerk (or President 
of the Supreme Criminal Court) of Scotland, f 

I have often heard both Ahm and Da/rsie laugh 
over their reminiscences of the important day when 
they ^^ put on the gown.'' After the ceremony was 
completed, and they had mingled for some time with 

* Redgauntlet, vol. i. p. 144. 

f An eminent annotator obeerves on this passage : -^ '* The 
praise of Lord Braxfield*8 capacity and acquirement is perliape 
rather too slight. He was a very good lawyer, and a man of 
extraordinary sagacity, and in quickness and sureness of appciB- 
hension resembled Lord Kenyon, as well as in his ready use of 
his profound knowledge of law." — 1839. 



CALL TO THE BAB. 253 

the crowd of barristers in the outer Court, Scott 
said to his comrade, mimicking the air and tone of 
a Highland lass waiting at the Cross of Edinburgh 
to be hired for the harvest work — " We've stood 
here an hour by the Tron, hinny, and de'il a ane has 
speered our price." Some friendly solicitor, however, 
gave him a guinea fee before the Court rose ; and as 
they walked down the High Street together, he said 
to Mr Clerk, in passing a hosier's shop — " This is 
a sort of a wedding-day, Willie ; I think I must go 
in and buy me a new night-cap." He did so accord- 
ingly ; perhaps this was Lord Jeffrey's " portentous 
machine." His first fee of any consequence, however, 
was expended on a silver taper-stand for his mother, 
which the old lady used to point to with great satis- 
faction, as it stood on her chimney-piece five-and- 
twenty years afterwards. 



254 LIFE or SIE WALTER SCOTT. 



CHAPTER VII. 

JRirst Expedition into Liddesdale — Study of Ger^ 
man — Political Trials^ Sfc. — Specimen of Law 
Papers — BUrget^s Lenore translated ^^ Dis- 
appointment in Love. 

1792-1796. 



Scott was called to the bar only the day before the 
closing of the session, and he appears to have almost 
immediately escaped to the country. On the 2d of 
August I find his father writing, — ^< I have sent the 
copies of your thesis as desired ;" and pn the 15th 
he addressed to him at Rosebank. a letter, in which 
there is this paragraph, an undoubted autograph of 
Mr Saunders Fairford, awno cetatis sixty-three: — 

« Dear Walter, 

*<.... I am glad that your expedition to the 



LETTER FBOM HIS FATHER. 255 

west proved agreeable. You do well to warn your 
mother against Ashestiel. Although I said little, vet 
I never thought that road could be agreeable ; be- 
sides, it is taking too wide a circle. Lord Justice- 
Clerk is in town attending the Bills.* He called 
here yesterday, and enquired very particularly for 
you. I told him where you was, and he expects to 
see you at Jedburgh upon the 21st. He is to be at 
Mellerstainf on the 20th, and will be there all night. 
His Lordship said, in a very pleasant manner, that 
something might cast up at Jedburgh to give you an 
opportunity of appearing, and that he would insist 
upon it, and that in future he meant to give you a 
share of the criminal business in this Court, all 
which is very kind. I told his Lordship that I had 
. dissuaded you from appearing at Jedburgh, but he 
said I was wrong in doing so, and I therefore leave 
the matter to you and him. / think it is probable 
he wiU breakfaat with Sir H, H, MacDougaU on 
the 2\sty on his way to Jedburgh!* ♦ * * 

This last quiet hint, that the young lawyer might 
as well be at Makerstoun (the seat of a relation) 

* The Judges then attended in Edinburgh in rotation during 
the intervals of term, to take care of various sorts of business 
which could not brook delay, biUs of injunction, &c 

f The beautiful seat of the Baillies of Jerviswood, in Berwick- 
shire, a few miles below Dryburgh. 



266 IJ7£ OF SIB WALTEE SCOTT. 

when His Lordship breakfasted there, and of coarse 
swell the train of His Lordship's little procession 
into the county town, seems delightfully character- 
istic. I think I hear Sir Walter himself lecturing 
me^ when in the same sort of situation, thirty years 
afterwards. He declined, as one of the following 
letters will show, the opportunity of making his first 
appearance on this occasion at Jedburgh. He was 
present, indeed, at the Court during the assizes, 
but ^^ durst not venture.'' His accounts to William 
Clerk of his vacation amusements, and more parti- 
cularly of his second excursion to Northumberland, 
will, I am sure, interest every reader : — 



" To William Clerk, Esq. Advocate^ Princess Street^ 
JEdinburgh. 

** Rosebask, lOtb Sept. 1792. 
« Dear William, 

" Taking the advantage of a very indifferent day, 
which is likely to float away a good deal of corn, 
and of my father's leaving this place, who will take 
charge of this scroll, I sit down to answer your 
favour. I find you have been, like myself, taking 
advantage of the good weather to look around you 
a little, and congratulate you upon the pleasure you 
must have received from your jaunt with Mr Rus- 



LETTER FROM BOSEBANK. 257 

sell.* I apprehend, though you are silent on the 
subject, that your conversation was enlivened by 
many curious disquisitions of the nature of undtt- 
lating exhalaticms. I should have bowed before the 
venerable grove of oaks at Hamilton with as much 
respect as if I had been a Druid about to gather the 
sacred mistletoe. I should hardly have suspected 
your host Sir William f of having been the occasion 
of the scandal brought upon the library and Mr 
Gibb J by the introduction of the Cabinet des Fees, 
of which I have a volume or two here. I am happy 
to think there is an admirer of snug things in the 
administration of the library. Poor Linton's § mis- 
fortune, though I cannot say it surprises, yet heartily 
grieves me. I have no doubt he will have many 
advisers and animadverters upon the naughtiness of 

* Mr Russell, surgeon, afterwards Professor of Clinical Surgery 
at Edinburgh. 

f Sir William Miller (Lord Glenlee.) 

f Mr Gibb was the Librarian of the Faculty of Advocates. 

§ Clerk, Abercromby, Scott, Fergusson, and others, had occa- 
sional boating excursions from Leith to Inchcolm, Inchkeith, &c. ; 
on one of these their boat was neared by a Newhaven one — 
Fergusson, at the moment, was standing up talking ; one of the 
Newhaven fishermen, taking him for a brother of his own craft, 
bawled out, " Linton, you lang bitch, is that you ?" From that 
day Adam Fergusson's cognomen among his friends of The Club 
was Linton. 

VOL. I. R 



258 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

his ways, whose admonitions will he forgot upon 
the next opportunity. 

^' I am lounging ahout the country here, to speak 
sincerely, as idle as the day is long. Two old com- 
panions of mine, brothers of Mr Walker of Wooden, 
having come to this country, we have renewed a 
great intimacy. As they live directly upon the 
opposite bank of the river, we have signals agreed 
upon by which we concert a plan of operations for 
the day. They are both officers, and very intelligent 
young fellows, and what is of some consequence, 
have a brace of fine greyhounds. Yesterday fore- 
noon we killed seven hares, so you may see how 
plenty the game is with us. I have turned a keen 
duck shooter, though my success is not very great ; 
and when wading through the mosses upon this er- 
rand, accoutred with the long gun, a jacket, mus- 
quito trowsers, and a rough cap, I might well pass 
for one of my redoubted moss-trooper progenitors, 
Walter Fire-the-Braes,* or rather Willie wi' the 
Bolt-Foot. 

" For about-doors' amusement, I have constructed 
a seat in a large tree, which spreads its branches 
horizontally over the Tweed. This is a favourite 



* Walter Scott of Synton (elder brother of BoU-Foot, the first 
Baron of Harden) was thus designated. He greatly distinguished 
kimself in the battle of Melrose, a, d. 1526. 



SEPTEMBER 17tt2. 259 

situation of mine for reading, especially in a day like 
this, when the west wind rocks the hranches on 
which I am perched, and the river rolls its waves 
helow me of a turhid blood colour. I have, more- 
over, cut an embrasure, through which I can fire 
upon the gulls, herons, and cormorants, as they fly 
screaming past my nest. To crown the whole, I 
have carved an inscription upon it in the ancient 
Roman taste. I believe I shall hardly return into 
town, barring acddents, sooner than the middle of 
next month, perhaps not till November. Next 
week, weather permitting, is destiiied for a Nor- 
thumberland expedition, in which I shall visit some 
parts of that country which I have not yet seen, 
particularly about Hexhanu Some days ago I had 
nearly met with a worse a^cid^nt than the tramp I 
took at Moorfoot ; * for having bewildered myself 
among the Cheviot hills, it was nearly nightfall be- 
fore I got to the village of Hownam, and the passes 
with which I was acquainted. You do not speak of 
being in Perthshire this season, though I suppose 
you intend it. I suppose we, that is, nous autres^1[ 
are at present completely di^rsed. 

*^ Compliments to all who are in town, and best 
respects to your own family, both in Prince's Street 

* This alludes to being lost in a fishing excursion, 
f The companions of The Club, 



260 MPE OP SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

and at Eldin. — Believe me ever most sincerely 
yom^ Walter Scott." 



" To William Clerk, Esq. 

*• RoMbank, 30th Sept 1792. 

« Dear William, 

'* I suppose this will find you flourishing' like a 
green bay-tree on the mountains of Perthshire, and 
in full enjoyment of all the pleasures of the country. 
All that I envy you is the nodes canaque deum^ 
which, I take it for granted, you three merry men 
will be spending together, while I am poring over 
Bartholine in the long evenings, solitary enough; 
for, as for the lobsters, as you call them, I am se- 
parated from them by the Tweed, which precludes 
evening meetings, unless in fine weather and full 
moons. I have had an expedition through Hexham 
and the higher parts of Northumberland, which 
would have delighted the very cockles of your heart, 
not so much on account of the beautiful romantie 
appearance of the country, though that would have 
charmed you also, as because you would have seen 
more Roman inscriptions built into gate-posts, bams, 
&c., than perhaps are to be found in any other part 
of Britain. These have been all dug up from the 
neighbouring Roman wall, which is still in many 



LETTER FROM ROSEBANK. 26 1 

places yery entire, and gives a stupendous idea of 
the perseverance of its founders, who carried such 
an erection from sea to sea, over rocks, mountains, 
rivers, and morasses. There are several lakes among 
the mountains above Hexham, well worth going 
many miles to see, though their fame is eclipsed by 
their neighbourhood to those of Cumberland. They 
are surrounded by old towers and castles, in situa- 
tions the most savagely romantic; what would I 
have given to have been able to take effect-pieces 
from some of them ! Upon the Tyne, about Hex- 
ham, the country has a different aspect, presenting 
much of the beautiful though less of the sublime. I 
was particularly charmed with the situation of Beau- 
front, a house belonging to a mad sort of genius, 
whom, I am sure, I have told you some stories 
about. He used to call himself the Noble Erring- 
ton, but of late has assumed the title of Duke of 
Hexham. Hard by the town is the £eld of battle 
where the forces of Queen Margaret were defeated 
by those of the House of York, a blow which the 
Red Rose never recovered during the civil wars. 
The spot where the Duke of Somerset and the nor- 
thern nobility of the Lancastrian faction were exe- 
cuted after the battle is still called Dukesfield. The 
inhabitants of this country speak an odd dialect of 
the Saxon, approaching nearly that of Obaucer, and 
have retained some customs peculiar to themselves. 



262 UFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

They are the descendants of the ancient Danes, 
chased into the fastnesses of Northumberland by the 
severity of William the Conqueror. Their ignorance 
is surprising to a Scotchman. It is common for 
the traders in cattle, which business is carried on 
to a great extent, to carry all letters received in 
course of trade to the parish church, where the 
clerk reads them aloud after service, and answers 
them according to circumstances. 

" We intended to visit the lakes in Cumberland, 
but our jaunt was cut short by the bad weather. I 
went to the circuit at Jedburgh, to make my bow to 
Lord J. Clerk, and might have had employment, but 
durst not venture. Nine of the Dunse rioters were 
condemned to banishment, but the ferment continues 
violent in the Merse. Kelso races afforded little 
sport — Wishaw* lost a horse which cost him £500, 
and foundered irrecoverably on the course. At an- 
other time I shall quote Greorge Buchanan's adage 
of *' a fool and his money,' but at present labour 
under a similar misfortune ; my Galloway having 
yesterday thought proper (N.B., without a rider) to 
leap over a gate, and being lamed for the present. 
This is not his first faux-pasy for he jumped into 
a water with me on his back when in Northumber* 



* William Hamilton of Wisliaw, — wbo afterwards established 
his claim to the peerage of Belhaven. 



SEPTEMBER 1792, 263 

land, to the imminent danger of my life. He is, 
therefore, to he sold (when recovered), and another 
purchased. This accident has occasioned yon the 
trouble of reading so long an epistle, the day being 
Sunday, and my uncle, the captain, busily engaged 
with your father's naval tactics, is too seriously 
employed to be an agreeable companion. Apropos 
(des bottes) — I am sincerely sorry to hear that 
James is still unemployed, but have no doubt a 
time will come round when his talents will have an 
opportunity of being displayed to his advantage. I 
have no prospect of seeing my chere adorable till 
winter, if then. As for you, I pity you not, seeing 
as how you have so good a succedaneum in M. G. ; 
and, on the contrary, hope, not only that Edmon- 
stone may roust you, but that Cupid may again (as 
erst) fry you on the gridiron of jealousy for your 
infidelity. Compliments to our right trusty and 
well -beloved Linton and Jean Jacques.* If you 
write, which, by the way, I hardly have the con- 
science to expect, direct to my father's care, who 
will forward your letter. I have quite given up 
duck -shooting for the season, the birds being too 
old, and the mosses too deep and cold. I have no 
reason to boast of my experience or success in the 
sport, and for my own part, should fire at any dis- 

* John James Edmonstone. 



264 UFE or 81B WAJ.TNL SCOTT. 

tance under eighty or eyen ninety paces, 
aboTe forty-fiye I would reckon it a coup detespere, 
and as the bird is beyond measure shy, you may be 
sure I was not very bloody. Believe me, defening:, 
oi unud^ our dispute till another opportunity, al- 
ways sincerely yours, 

« P. S. — I believe, if my pony does not soon 
recover, that misfortune, with the bad weather, may 
send me soon to town." 

It was within a few days after Scott's return from 
his excursion to Hexham, that, while attending the 
Michaelmas head-court, as an annual county-meet- 
ing is called, at Jedburgh, he was introduced, by an 
old companion, Charles Kerr of Abbotrule, to Mr 
Robert Shortreed, that gentleman's near relation, 
who spent the greater part of his life in the enjoy- 
ment of much respect as Sheriff-substitute of Rox- 
burghshire. Scott had been expressing his wish to 
visit the then wild and inaccessible district of Lid- 
desdale, particularly with a view to examine the 
ruins of the famous castle of Hermitage, and to pick 
up some of the ancient riding bcUlads, said to be 
still preserved among the descendants of the moss- 
troopers, who had followed the banner of the Dou- 
glasses, when lords of that grim and remote fastness. 



i 



JLIDDESDAUB 1792. 265 

Mr Shortreed had many connexions in Liddesdale, 
and knew its passes well, and he was pointed out as 
the very guide the young advocate wanted. They 
started, accordingly, in a day or two afterwards, 
from Ahbotrule ; and the laird meant to have been 
of the party ; but " it was well for him," said Short 
reed, ^^ that he changed his mind — for he could 
never have done as we did." * 

During seven successive years Scott made a raid, 
as he called it, into Liddesdale, with Mr Shortreed 
for his guide ; exploring every rivulet to its source, 
and every ruined peel from foundation to battlement. 
. At this time no wheeled carriage had ever been seen 

''*^ , in the district — the first, indeed, that ever appeared 
^ there was a gig, driven by Scott himself for a part 

'^ of his way, when on the last of these seven excur- 

i** „ sions. There was no inn nor public-house of anv 

^ . I kind in the whole valley ; the travellers passed from 
ff^ the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again 

D^^ from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the 

i>^ * I am obliged to Mr John Elliot Shortreed, a son of Scott's 

{jet I' early friend, for some memoranda of his father's conversations on 

J/^f this subject. These notes were written in 1824; and I shall 

make several quotations from them. I had, however, many 
opportunities of hearing Mr Shortreed*s stories from his own 
lips, having often been under his hospitable roof in company 

[t^^ with Sir Walter, who to the last always was his old friend's 

tjfif guest when business took him to JedburgK 









n 



f 



266 LIFE OP SIR WAJLTER SCOTT. 

rough and jolly welcome of the homestead; gathering, 
wherever they went, songs and tnnes, and occasion- 
ally more tangible relics of antiquity — even such 
<'a rowth of auld nicknackets" as Bums ascribes 
to Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed 
much of the materials of his '' Minstrelsy of the 
Scottish Border ;" and not less of that intimate ac- 
quaintance with the living manners of these unso- 
phisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm 
of one of the most charming of his prose works. 
But how soon he had any definite object before him 
in his researches, seems very donbtfuL *< He was 
rmkivC himsell a' the time,** said lirlr Shortreed; 
'< but he didna ken maybe what he was about till 
years had passed : At first he thought o' little, I dare 
say, but the queemess and the fim." 

** In those days," says the Memorandum before 
me, " advocates were not so plenty — at least about 
Liddesdale f and the worthy Sheriff-substitute goes 
on to describe the sort of bustle, not unmixed with 
alarm, produced at the first farm-house they visited 
(Willie Elliot's at Millbumholm), when the honest 
man was informed of the quality of one of his guests. 
When they dismounted, accordingly, he received 
Mr Scott with great ceremony, and insisted upon 
himself leading his horse to the stable. Shortreed 
accompanied Willie, however, and the latter, alter 
taking a deliberate peep at Scott, " out-by the edge 



IJDDESDALE. 267 

of the door-cheek," whispered, " Weel, Robin, I say, 
de'il hae me if I's be a bit feared for him now ; he's 
just a chield like ourselves, I think." Half-a-dozen 
dogs of all degrees had already gathered round <' the 
advocate,*' and his way of returning their compli- 
ments had set Willie Elliot at once at his ease. 

According to Mr Shortreed, this good -man of 
Millbumholm was the great original of Dandie Din- 
mont. As he seems to have been the first of these 
upland sheep-farmers that Scott ever visited, there 
can be little doubt that he sat for some parts of that 
inimitable portraiture; and it is certain that the 
James Davidson, who carried the name of Dandie 
to his grave with him, and whose thoroughbred 
deathbed scene is told in the Notes to Guy Manner- 
ing, was first pointed out to Scott by Mr Shortreed 
himself, several years after the novel had established 
the man's celebrity all over the Border ; some acci- 
dental report about his terriers, and their odd names, 
having alone been turned to account in the original 
composition of the tale. But I have the best reason 
to believe that the kind and manly character of 
Dandie, the gentle and delicious one of his wife, and 
some at least of the most picturesque peculiarities 
of the menage at Charlieshope, were filled up from 
Scott's observation, years after this period, of a 
family, with one of whose members he had, through 
the best part of his life, a close and affectionate con- 



268 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

nexion. To those who were familiar with him, I 
have perhaps already sufficiently indicated the early 
home of his dear friend, William Laidlaw, among 
" the braes of Yarrow." 

They dined at Millburnholm, and after having 
lingered over Willie Elliot's punch-bowl, until, in 
Mr Shortreed's phrase, they were " half-glowrin," 
mounted their steeds again, and proceeded to Dr 
Elliot's at Cleughhead, where (" for," says my Me- 
morandum, " folk were na very nice in those days") 
the two travellers slept in one and the same bed — 
as, indeed, seems to have been the case with them 
throughout most of their excursions in this primi- 
tive district. This Dr Elliot had already a large 
MS. collection of the ballads Scott was in quest of ; 
and finding how much his guest admired his acquisi- 
tions, thenceforth exerted himself, for several years, 
with redoubled diligence, in seeking out the living 
depositaries of such lore among the darker recesses 
of the mountains. " The Doctor," says Mr Shortreed, 
" would have gane through fire and water for Sir 
Walter, when he ance kenned him." 

Next morning they seem to have ridden a long- 
way, for the express purpose of visiting one " auld 
Thomas o' Twizzlehope," another Elliot, I suppose, 
who was celebrated for his skill on the Border pipe, 
and in particular for being in possession of the real 
lilt of Dick o' the Cow. Before starting, that is, at 



LIDDESDALE. 269 

six o'clock, the ballad-hunters had, " just to lay the 
stomach, a devilled duck or twae, and some London 
porter." Auld Thomas found them, nevertheless, 
well disposed for " breakfast" on their arrival at 
Twizzlehope ; and this being over, he delighted them 
with one of the most hideous and imearthly of all the 
specimens of " riding music," and, moreover, with 
considerable libations of whisky-punch, manufactured 
in a certain wooden vessel, resembling a very small 
milk-pail, which he called " Wisdom," because it 
" made" only a few spoonfuls of spirits — though 
he had the art of replenishing it so adroitly, that it 
had been celebrated for fifty years as more fatal to 
sobriety than any bowl in the parish. Having done 
due honour to " Wisdom," they again mounted, and 
proceeded over moss and moor to some other equally 
hospitable master of the pipe. ^' £h me," says Short- 
reed, " sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as 
he then had wi' him ! Never ten yards but we were 
either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever 
we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to every 
body ! He aye did as the lave did ; never made him- 
sel* the great man, or took ony airs in the company. 
I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and 
gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk — (this, how- 
ever, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare) — 
but drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He 



270 LIFE OF SIR WALTEE SCOTT. 

looked excessively heavy and stupid when he wasfoUf 
but he was never out o' gude-humour." 

On reaching, one evening, some Charlieshope or 
other (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, 
they found a kindly reception as usual ; but to their 
agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a 
measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. 
Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry 
wine alone had been produced, a young student of 
divinity, who happened to be in the house, was called 
upon to take the *' big ha' Bible," in the good old 
fashion of Burns's Saturday Night ; and some pro- 
gress had been already made in the service, when the 
goodman of the farm, whose " tendency," as Mr Mit- 
chell says, '* was soporific," scandalized his wife and 
the dominie by starting suddenly from his knees, and 
rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of 

" By , here's the keg at last !" and in tumbled, 

as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, 
whom, on hearing a day before of the advocate's 
approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain 
smuggler's haunt, at some considerable distance, in 
quest of a supply of run brandy from the Solway 
Frith. The pious '^ exercise" of the household was 
hopelessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies 
for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly 
£lliot, or Armstrong, had the welcome keg mounted 
on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle 



UDDESDALE. 27 1 

and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued 
carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon 
the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I 
saw him in company with his Liddesdale companion, 
to mimic with infinite humour the sudden outburst 
of his old host, on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, 
which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg — 
the consternation of the dame — and the rueful de- 
spair with which the young clergyman closed the 
book. 

" It was in that same season, I think," says Mr 
Shortreed, « that Sir Walter got from Dr Elliot, 
the large old border war horn, which ye may still 
see hanging in the armoury at Abbotsford. How 
great he was when he was made master o' that ! I 
beUeve it had been found in Hermitage Castle — and 
one of the Doctor's servants had used it many a day 
as a grease-horn for his scythe, before they disco- 
vered its history. When cleaned out, it was never a 
hair the worse — the original chain, hoop, and mouth- 
piece of steel, were all entire, just as you now see 
them. Sir Walter carried it home all the way from 
Liddesdale to Jedburgh, slung about his neck like 
Johnny Gilpin's bottle, while I was intrusted with 
an ancient bridlebit, which we had likewise picked up. 

* The feint o' pride — na pride liad he . . . 
A lang kail-gully hung down by his side. 
And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had l^ej* 



272 LIFE OF SIB WAIiTEE SCOTT. 

and meikle and sair we routed on% and ' botched 
and blew, wi' micbt and main.' O wbat pleasant 
days ! And tben a' tbe nonsense we bad cost ns nae- 
tbing. We never put band in pocket for a week on 
end. Tollbars tbere were none — and indeed I think 
our baill charges were a feed o' com to our horses in 
tbe gangin* and comin' at Riccartoun mill." 

It is a pity that we have no letters of Scott's 
describing this first raid into Liddesdale ; but as he 
must have left; Kelso for Edinburgh very soon after 
its conclusion, he probably chose to be the bearer of 
his own tidings. At any rate, the wonder perhaps 
is, not that we should have so few letters of this pe- 
riod, as that any have been recovered. '^ I ascribe 
the preservation of my little handful," says Mr Clerk, 
<< to a sort of instinctive prophetic sense of his future 
greatness." 

I have found, however, two note-books, inscribed 
" Walter Scott, 1792," containing a variety of scraps 
and bints which may help us to fill up our notion of 
his private studies during that year. He appears to 
have used them indiscriminately. We have now an 
extract from the author he happened to be reading ; 
now a memorandum of something that had struck 
him in conversation ; a fragment of an essay ; tran- 
scripts of favourite poems ; remarks on curi<}us cases 
in the old records of the Justiciary Court ; in short, 
a most miscellaneous collection, in which there is 



NOTE-BOOKS OF 1792. 273 

whatever might have been looked for, with perhaps 
the single exception of original verse. One of the 
books opens with: " Vegtcm^s Kvitha, or The De- 
scent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, 
and the English poetical version of Mr Gray ; with 
some account of the death of Balder, both as nar- 
rated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the 
Northern historians — Auctore Gualtero Scott!* The 
Norse original, and the two versions, are then tran- 
scribed; and the historical account appended, ex- 
tending to seven closely written quarto pages, was I 
doubt not, read before one or other of his debating 
societies. Next comes a page, headed " Pecuniary 
distress of Charles the First," and containing a tran- 
script of a receipt for some plate lent to the King in 
1643. He then copies Langhome's Owen of Car- 
ron; the verses of Canute, on passing Ely; the lines 
to a cuckoo given by Warton as the oldest specimen 
of English verse ; a translation " by a gentleman 
in Devonshire," of the death -song of Regner Lod- 
brog; and the beautiful quatrain omitted in Gray's 



* There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,' &c. 

After this we have an Italian canzonet^ on the praises 
of blue » eyes (which were much in favour at this 
time ;) several pages of etymologies from Ducange ; 
some more of notes on the Morte Arthur; extracts 
VOL. I. s 



1 



274 lAiE OF SIR WALT£R SCOTT. 

from the books of Adjournal, about Dame Janet 
Beaton, the Lady of Branxome of the Liay of the 
Last Minstrel, and her husband, " Sir Walter Scott 
of Buccleuch, called Wicked Wat;" other extracts 
about witches and fairies; various couplets from 
Hall's Satires; a passage from Albania; notes on 
the Second Sight, with extracts from Aubrey and 
Glanville ; a << List of ballads to be discovered or 
recovered;" extracts from Guerin de Montglave; 
and after many more similar entries, a table of the 
Mseso- Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Runic alphabets — 
with a fourth section, headed German^ but left blank. 
But enough perhaps of this record. 

In November 1792, Scott and Clerk began their 
regular attendance at the Parliament House, and 
Scott, to use Mr Clerk's words, " by and by crept 
into a tolerable share of such business as may be ex- 
pected from a writer's connexion." By this we are 
to understand that he was employed from time to 
time by his father, and probably a few other solicitors, 
in that dreary everyday taskwork, chiefly of long 
written informations^ and other papers for the court, 
on which young counsellors of the Scotch bar were 
then expected to bestow a great deal of trouble for 
very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarce- 
ly a chance of finding reserved for their hands any 
matter that could elicit the display of superior know- 
ledge of understanding. He had also his part in the 



THE MOUNTAIN. 275 

cases of persons suing in forma pauperis ; but how 
little important those that came to his share were, 
and how slender was the impression they had left on 
his mind, we may gather from a note on Redgauntlet, 
wherein he signifies his doubts whether he really had 
erer been engaged in what he has certainly made the 
caibse celebre of Poor Peter Peebles, 

But he soon became as famous for his powers of 
story-telling among the lawyers of the Outer- House, 
as he had been among the companions of his High 
School days. The place where these idlers mostly 
congregated was called, it seems, by a name which 
sufficiently marks the date — it was the Mountain, 
Here, as Roger North says of the Court of King's 
Bench in his early day, << there was more news than 
law;" — here hour afker hour passed away, week 
after week, month after month, and year after year, 
in the interchange of light-hearted merriment among 
a circle of young men, more than one of whom, in 
after times, attained the highest honours of the pro- 
fession. Among the most intimate of Scott's daily 
associates from this time, and during all his subse- 
sequent attendance at the bar, were, besides various 
since-eminent persons that have been already named, 
the first legal antiquary of our time in Scotland, Mr 
Thomas Thomson, and William Erskine, afterwards 
Lord Kinedder. Mr Clerk remembers complaining 
one morning on finding the group convulsed with 



276 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

laughter, that Duns Scotus had been forestalling him 
in a good story, which he had communicated privately 
the day before — adding, moreover, that his friend 
had not only stolen, but disguised it " Why," an- 
swered he, skilfully waving the main charge, *' this 
is always the way with the Baronet, He is conti- 
nually sapng that I change his stories, whereas in 
fact I only put a cocked hat on their heads, and stick 
a cane into their hands — to make them fit for going 
into company." 

The German class, of which we have an account 
in one of the Prefaces of 1830, was formed before 
the Christmas of 1792, and it included almost all 
these loungers of the Mountain. In the essay now 
referred to, Scott traces the interest excited in Scot- 
land on the subject of German literature to a paper 
read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the 
21st of April 1788, by the author of the Man of 
Feeling. " The literary persons of Edinburgh," he 
says, " were then first made aware of the existence 
of works of genius in a language cognate with the 
English, and possessed of the same manly force of 
expression; they learned at the same time that the 
taste which dictated the German compositions was of 
a kind as nearly allied to the English as their lan- 
guage: those who were from their youth accustomed 
to admire Shakspeare and Milton, became acquainted 
ioT the first time with a race of poets, who had the 



GERMAN STUDIES. 277 

same lofty ambition to spurn the flaming boundaries 
of the universe, and investigate the realms of Chaos 
and Old Night; and of dramatists, who, disclaiming 
the pedantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of 
occasional improbabilities and extravagance, to pre- 
sent life on the stage in its scenes of wildest contrast, 

and in all its boundless variety of character 

Their fictions narratives, their ballad poetry, and 
other branches of their literature, which are particu- 
larly apt to bear the stamp of the extravagant and 
the supernatural, began also to occupy the attention 
of the British literati. In Edinburgh, where the re- 
markable coincidence between the Grerman language 
and the Lowland Scottish encouraged young men to 
approach this newly-discovered spring of literature, 
a class was formed of six or seven intimate friends, 
who proposed to make themselves acquainted with 
the German language. They were in the habit of 
being much together, and the time they spent in this 
new study was felt as a period of great amusement. 
One source of this diversion was the laziness of one 
of their number, the present author, who, averse to 
the necessary toil of grammar, and the rules, was in 
the practice of fighting his way to the knowledge of 
the German by his acquaintance with the Scottish 
and Anglo-Saxon dialects, and of course frequently 
committed blunders which were not lost on his more 
accurate and more studious companions." The teach- 



278 LIFE OF Sm WALTER SCOTT. 

er, Dr. Willich, a medical man, is then described as 
striving- with little success to make his pupils sympa- 
thize in his own passion for the " sickly monotony," 
and " aflfected ecstasies'* of Gessner's Death of Abel; 
and the young students, having at length acquired 
enough of the language for their respective purposes, 
as selecting for their private pursuits, some the 
philosophical treatises of Kant, others the dramas of 
Schiller and Goethe. The chief, if not the only 
Kantist of the party, was, I believe, John Macfarlan 
of Kirkton : among those who turned zealously to the 
popular BeUes Lettres of Germany were, with Scott, 
his most intimate friends of the period, William 
Clerk, William Erskine, and Thomas Thomson. 

These studies were much encouraged by the ex- 
ample, and assisted by the advice, of an accomplished 
person, considerably Scott's superior in standing, 
Alexander Fraser Tytler, afterwards a Judge of the 
Court of Session by the title of Lord Woodhouselee. 
His version of Schiller's Robbers was one of the 
earliest from the German theatre, and no doubt sti- 
mulated his young friend to his first experiments in 
the same walk. 

The contemporary familiars of those days almost 
all survive; but one, and afterwards the most inti- 
mate of them all, went before him; and I may there- 
fore hazard in this place a few words on the influence 
which he exercised at this critical period on Scott's 



•WILLIAM ERSKINE. 279 

literary tastes and studies. William Erskine was the 
son of an Episcopalian clergyman in Perthshire, of a 
good family, hut far from wealthy^ He had received 
his early education at Glasgow, where, while attending 
the college lectures, he was boarded under the roof of 
Andrew Macdonald, the author of Vimonda, who then 
officiated as minister to a small congregation of Epis- 
copalian nonconformists. From this unfortunate but 
very ingenious man, Erskine had derived, in boyhood^ 
a strong passion for old English literature, more 
especially the Elizabethan dramatists; which, how- 
ever, he combined with a far livelier relish for the 
classics of antiquity than either Scott or his master 
ever possessed. From the beginning, accordingly, 
Scott had in Erskine a monitor who — entering most 
warmly into his taste for national lore — the life of 
the past — and the bold and picturesque style of the 
original English school — was constantly urging the 
advantages to be derived from combining with its va- 
ried and masculine breadth of delineation such atten- 
tion to the minor graces of arrangement and diction 
as might conciliate the fastidiousness of modem taste. 
Deferring what I may have to say as to Erskine's 
general character and manners, until I shall have ap- 
proached the period when I myself had the pleasure 
of sharing his acquaintance, I introduce the general 
bearing of his literary opinions thus early, because I 
conceive there is no doubt that his companionship 



280 ilFE OF Sm WALTEE SCOTT. 

was, even in those days, highly serviceable to Scott 
as a student of the German drama and romance. 
Directed, as he mainly was in the ultimate deter- 
mination of his Uterary ambition, by the example of 
their great founders, he appears to have run at first 
no trivial hazard of adopting the extravagances, botli 
of thought and language, which he found blended in 
their works with such a captivating display of genius, 
and genius employed on subjects so much in unison 
with the deepest of his own juvenile predilections. 
His friendly critic was just as well as delicate ; and 
unmerciful severity as to the mingled absurdities and 
vulgarities of German detail commanded deliberate 
attention from one, who admired not. less enthusias- 
tically than himself the genuine sublimity and pathos 
of his new favourites. I could, I believe, name one 
other at least among Scott's fellow-students of the 
same time, whose influence was combined in this 
matter with Erskine's ; but his was that which con- 
tinued to be exerted the longest, and always in the 
same direction. That it was not accompanied wiih 
entire success, the readers of the Doom of Devorgoil, 
to say nothing of minor blemishes in far better 
works, must acknowledge. 

These Grerman studies divided Scott's attention 
with the business of the courts of law, on which he 
was at least a regular attendant during the winter of 
1792-3. 



CASE OF M'NAUGHT 1793. 281 

In March, when the Court rose, he proceeded into 
Galloway, where he had not before been, in order to 
make himself acquainted with the persons and lo- 
calities mixed up with the case of a certain Rev. 
Mr M*Naught, minister of Girthon, whose trial, on 
charges of habitual drunkenness, singing of lewd 
and profane songs, dancing and toying at a penny- 
wedding with a '< sweetie wife" (that is , an itinerant 
vender of gingerbread, &c.), and moreover of pro- 
moting irregular marriages as a justice of the peace, 
was about to take place before the General Assembly 
of the Kirk. 

As his " Case for M'Naught," dated May 1793, 
is the first of his legal papers that I have discovered, 
and contains several characteristic enough turns, I 
make no apology for introducing a few extracts : — 

^^ At the head of the first class of offences stands the 
extraordinary assertion, that, being a Minister of the 
Gospel, the respondent had illegally imdertaken the office 
of a justice of peace. It is, the respondent believes, 
the first time that ever the undertaking an office of such 
extensive utility was stated as a crime ; for he humbly 
apprehends, that by conferring the office of a justice of 
the peace upon clergymen, their influence may, in the 
general case, be rendered more extensive among their 
parishioners, and many trifling causes be settled by them, 
which might lead the litigants to enormous expenses, and 
become the subject of much contention before other courts. 
The duty being only occasional, and not daily, cannot be 



282 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

said to interfere with those of their function ; and their 
education, and presumed character, render them most 
proper for the office. It is indeed alleged, that the act 
1584, chap. 133, excludes clergymen from acting under 
a commission of the peace. This act, however, was passed 
at a time when it was of the highest importance to the 
Crown to wrench from the hands of the clergy the power 
of administering justice in civil cases, which had, from 
the ignorance of the laity, been enjoyed by them almost 
exclusively. During the whole reign of James VI. , as 
is well known to the Reverend Court, such a jealousy 
subsisted betwixt the Church and the State, that those 
who were at the head of the latter endeavoured, by every 
means in their power, to diminish the influence of the 
former. At present, when these dissensions happily no 
longer subsist, the law, as far as regards the office of 
justice of the peace, appears to have fallen into disuse, 
and the respondent conceives that any minister is ca- 
pable of acting in that, or any other judicial capacity, 
provided it is of such a nature as not to withdraw much 
of his time from what the statute calls the comfort and 
edification of the flock committed to him. Further, the 
act 1584 is virtually repealed by the statute 6th Anne, 
c. 6, sect. 2, which makes the Scots law on the subject 
of justices of the peace the same with that of England, 
where the office is publicly exercised by the clergy of all 
descriptions. 

****** Another branch of the accusation against 
the defender as a justice of peace, is the ratification of 
irregular marriages. The defender must here also call 
the attention of his reverend brethren and judges to the 



CASE OP M*NAUGHT. 283 

expediency of his conduct. The girls were usually with 
child at the time the application was made to the defender. 
In this situation, the children bom out of matrimony, 
though begot under promise of marriage, must have been 
thrown upon the parish, or perhaps murdered in infancy, 
had not the men been persuaded to consent to a solemn 
declaration of betrothment, or private marriage, emitted 
before the defender as a justice of peace. The defender 
himself, commiserating the situation of such women, 
often endeavoured to persuade their seducers to do them 
justice ; and men frequently acquiesced in this sort of 
marriage, when they could by no means have been pre- 
vailed upon to go through the ceremonies of proclamation 
of banns, or the expense and trouble of a public wedding. 
The declaration of a previous marriage was sometimes 
literally true ; sometimes a fiction voluntarily emitted by 
the parties themselves, under the belief that it was the 
most safe way of constituting a private marriage de pre- 
senti. The defender had been induced, from the practice 
of other justices, to consider the receiving these decla- 
rations, whether true or false, as a part of his duty which 
he could not decline, even had he been willing to do so. 
Finally, the defender must remind the Venerable As- 
sembly, that he acted upon these occasions as a justice of 
peace, which brings him back to the point from which 
he set out, viz. that the Reverend Court are utterly 
incompetent to take cognizance of his conduct in that 
character, which no sentence that they can pronounce 
could give or take away. 

^^ The second grand division of the libel against the 
defender refers to his conduct as a clergyman and a 



284 UFE OF sm walteb scott. 

Christian. He was charged in the libel with the most 
gross and vulgar behavionr, with drunkenness, blas- 
phemy, and impiety; yet all the evidence which the ap- 
pellants have been able to bring forward tends only to 
convict him of three acts of drunkenness during the 
course of fourteen years : for even the Presbytery, se- 
vere as they have been, acquit him quoad ultra. But the 
attention of the Reverend Court is earnestly entreated 
to the situation of the defender at the time, the curcum- 
stances which conduced to his imprudence, and the share 
which some of those had in occasioning his guilt, who 
have since been most active in persecuting and dbtressing 
him on account of it. 

*^ The defender must premise, by observing, that the 
crime of drunkenness consists not in a man*s having been 
in that situation twice or thrice in his life, but in the 
constant and habitual practice of the vice ; the distinction 
between ebrius and ebriosus being founded in common 
sense, and recognised by law. A thousand cases may be 
supposed, in which a num, without being aware of what 
he is about, may be insensibly led on to intoxication, 
especially in a country where the vice is unfortunately 
so common, that upon some occasions a man may go to 
excess from a false sense of modesty, or a fear of dis- 
obliging his entertainer. The defender will not deny, 
that after losing his senses upon the occasions, and in the 
manner to be afterwards stated, he may have committed 
improprieties which fill him with sorrow and r^pret: but 
he hopes, that in case he shall be able to show circum- 
stances which abridge and palliate the guilt of his im- 
prudent excess, the Venerable Court will consider these 



CASE OF M*NAUGHT. 285 

improprieties as the effects of that excess only, and not 
as arising from any radical vice in his temper or dispo- 
sition. When a man is bereft of his judgment by the 
influence of wine, and commits any crime, he can only 
be said to be morally culpable, in proportion to the im- 
propriety of the excess he has committed, and not in 
proportion to the magnitude of its evil consequences. In 
a legal view, indeed, a man must be held as answerable 
and pimishable for such a crime, precisely as if he had 
been in a state of sobriety ; but his crime is, in a moral 
light, comprised in the origo mali^ the drunkenness only. 
His senses being once gone, he is no more than a human 
machine, as insensible of misconduct, in speech and 
action, as a parrot or an automaton. This is more parti- 
cularly the case with respect to indecorums, such as the 
defender is accused of; for a man can no more be held 
a common swearer, or a habitual talker of obscenity, be- 
cause he has been guilty of using such expressions when 
intoxicated, than he can be termed an idiot, because, 
when intoxicated, he has spoken nonsense. If, therefore, 
the defender can extenuate the guilt of his intoxication, 
he hopes that its consequences will be numbered rather 
among his misfortunes than faults ; and his Reverend 
Brethren will consider him, wlule in that state, as acting 
!from a mechanical impulse, and as incapable of distin- 
guishing between right and wrong. For the scandal 
which his behaviour may have occasioned, he feels the 
most heartfelt sorrow, and will submit with penitence 
and contrition to the severe rebuke which the Presby- 
tery have decreed against him. But he cannot think 
that his unfortunate misdemeanour, circumstanced as he 



286 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

was, merits a severer punishment. He can show, that 
pains were at these times taken to lead him on, when 
bereft of his senses, to subjects which were likely to call 
forth improper or indecent expressions. The defender 
must further urge, that not being originally educated for 
the church, he may, before he assumed the sacred cha- 
racter, have occasionally permitted himself freedoms of 
expression which are reckoned less culpable among the 
laity. Thus he may, during that time, have learned the 
songs which he is accused of singing, though rather in- 
consistent with his clerical character. What, then, was 
more natural, than that, when thrown off his guard by 
the assumed conviviality and artful solicitations of those 
about him, former improper habits, though renounced 
during his thinking moments, might assume the reins of 
his imagination, when his situation rendered him utterly 
insensible of their impropriety ? 

* * * * " The Venerable Court will now consider how 
far three instances of ebriety, and their consequences, 
should ruin at once the character and the peace of mind 
of the unfortunate defender, and reduce him, at his ad- 
vanced time of life, about sixty years, together with his 
aged parent, to a state of beggary. He hopes his severe 
sufferings may be considered as some atonement for the 
improprieties of which he may have been guilty ; and 
that the Venerable Court will, in their judgment, re- 
member mercy. 

" In respect whereof, &c. 

Walter Scott.*' 

This argument (for which he received five guineas) 



CASE OF M'NAUGHT. 287 

was sustained by Scott in a speech of considerable 
length at the bar of the Assembly. It was far the 
most important business in which any solicitor had 
as yet employed him, and The Club mustered strong 
in the gallery. He began in a low voice, but by de- 
grees gathered more confidence ; and when it became 
necessary for him to analyse the evidence touching 
a certain penny-wedding, repeated some very coarse 
specimens of his client's alleged conversation, in a 
tone so bold and free, that he was called to order 
with great austerity by one of the leading members 
of the Venerable Court. This seemed to confuse 
him not a little ; so when, by and by, he had to 
recite a stanza of one of M*Naught's convivial 
ditties, he breathed it out in a faint and hesitating 
style ; whereupon, thinking he needed encouragement, 
the allies in the gallery astounded the Assembly by 
cordial shouts of hear! hear! — encore! encore! 
They were immediately turned out, and Scott got 
through the rest of his harangue very little to his 
own satisfaction. 

He believed, in a word, that he had made a 
complete failure, and issued from the Court in a 
melancholy mood. At the door he found Adam 
Fergusson waiting to inform him that the brethren 
so unceremoniously extruded from the gallery had 
sought shelter in a neighbouring tavern, where they 
hoped he would join them. He complied with the 



288 UFE OF SIR WAI.Ti:& SCOTT. 

invitation, but seemed for a long while incapable of 
enjoying the merriment of his friends. ^< Come, 
Duns" cried the Baronet — '^ cheer up, man, and 
fill another tumbler ; here's ♦••••• going to give 
us The Tailor r — " Ah !" he answered, with a 
groan, '' the tailor was a better man than me, sirs ; 
for he didna venture hen until he kenned the wayP 
A certain comical old song, which had, perhaps, 
been a favourite with the minister of Girthon — 

*' The tailor he came here to sew, 
And weel he keiin*d the way o*t," &c. 

was, however, sung and chorussed ; and the evening 
ended in the full jollity of High Jinks, 

Mr M^Naught was deposed from the ministry, and 
his young advocate has written out at the end of the 
printed papers on the case two of the songs whidi 
had been alleged in the evidence. They are both 
grossly indecent. It is to be observed, that the re- 
search he had made with a view to pleading this 
man's cause, carried him, for the first, and I believe 
for the last time, into the scenery of his Guy Man- 
nering; and I may add, that several of the names of 
the minor characters of the novel (that of M*Guffbgj 
for example) appear in the list of witnesses for and 
against his client. 

If the preceding autumn forms a remarkable point 
in Scott's history, as first introducing him to the 



HIGHLAND EXCURSION — 1793. 289 

manners of the wilder Border country, the summer 
which followed left traces of equal importance. He 
gave the greater part of it to an excursion which 
much extended his knowledge of Highland scenery 
and character ; and in particular furnished him with 
the richest stores, which he afterwards turned to 
account in one of the most heautiful of his great 
poems, and in several, including the first, of his prose 
romances. 

Accompanied hy Adam Fergusson, he visited on 
this occasion some of the finest districts of Stirling- 
shire and Perthshire; and not in the percursory 
manner of his more hoyish expeditions, but taking 
up his residence for a week or ten days in succession 
at the family residences of several of his young allies 
of the Mountaiuy and from thence familiarizing him- 
self at leisure with' the country and the people round 
about. In this way he lingered some time at Tulli- 
body, the seat of the father of Sir Ralph Abercromby, 
and grandfather of his friend Mr George Abercromby 
(now Lord Abercromby )) and heard from the old 
gentleman's own lips his narrative of a journey which 
he had been obliged to make, shortly after he first 
settled in Stirlingshire, to the wild retreat of Rob 
Roy. The venerable laird told how he was received 
by the cateran " with mudi courtesy," in a cavern 
exactly such as that of Bean Lean; dined on collops 
cut from some of his own cattle, which he recognised 

VOL. I. T 



290 LIFE OF SIR WAXTER SCOTT. 

hanging by their heels from the rocky roof beyond ; 
and returned in all safety, after concluding a bargain 
of hlack-maU — in virtue of which annual payment 
Rob Roy guaranteed the future security of his herds 
against, not his own followers merely, but all free- 
booters whatever. Scott next visited his friend £d- 
monstone, at Newton, a beautiful seat close to the 
ruins of the once magnificent Castle of Doune, and 
heard another aged gentleman's vivid recollections of 
all that happened there when John Home, the author 
of Douglas, and other Hanoverian prisoners, escaped 
from the Highland garrison in 1745.* Proceeding 
towards the sources of the Teith, he was received 
for the first time under a roof which, in subsequent 
years, he regularly revisited, that of another of his 
associates, Buchanan, the young Laird of Cambus- 
more. It was thus that the ^scenery of Loch K&* 
trine came to be so associated with '^ the recollectioa 
of many a dear friend and merry expedition of for- 
mer days," that to compose the Lady of the Lake 
was <^ a labour of love, and no less so to recall the 
manners and incidents introduced." f It was starting 
from the same house, when the poem itself had made 
some progress, that he put to the test the practica- 
bility of riding from the banks of Loch Vennadiar 
to the Castle of Stirling within the brief space which 

• Waverley, vol. ii. p. 82. 

t Introduction to The Lady of the Lake.— 1830. 



CRAIGHALL. 291 

he had assigned to Fitz-James's Grey Bayard, after 
the duel with Roderick Dhu ; and the principal land- 
marks in the description of that fiery progress are so 
many hospitable mansions, all familiar to him at the 
same period — Blairdmmmond, the residence of Lord 
Kaimes; Ochtertyre, that of John Ramsay, the 
scholar and antiquary (now best remembered for 
his kind and sagacious advice to Bums ;) and ^ the 
lofty brow of ancient Kier," the splendid seat of the 
chief family of the name of Stirling ; from which» 
to say nothing of remoter objects, the prospect has,, 
on one hand, the rock of ^^ Snowdon/' and in front 
the field of Bannockbum. 

Another resting place was Craighall, in Perth^ 
shire, the seat of the Rattrays, a family related to 
Mr Clerk, who accompanied him. From the posi^ 
tion of this striking place, as Mr Clerk at once per^ 
ceived, and as the author afterwards confessed to him, 
that of the TuUy-Veolan was very faithfully copied^ 
though in the description of the house itself, and its 
gardens, many features were adopted from Bruntsfield 
and Ravelstone.* Mr Clerk has told me that he 
went through the first chapters of Waverley without 
more than a vague suspicion of the new noveUst; 
but that when he read the arrival at Tully-Veolan, 
his suspicion was at once converted into certainty^ 

* Waverley, vol. i. p. 82. 



} 



^^n VLTEB SCOTT. 

292 LIFE OF SIR WAT 

and he handed the book to h . / ,. J .' 
J *u *u -; • u rpSpncluding a bargam 

and the authors, sayinir " Thiw^ °, ^ 

Tni 1 , «, ^ , , , Nmnual payment 

I^ lay a bet youll find such and sucET ^ , . , . 
•^ '^ /^^ bis herde 

next chapter." I hope Mr Clerk will its^^ . 

for mentioning the particular circumstance th»i^^, 
flashed the conviction on his mind. In the couk^ 
of a ride from Craighall they had both become con-^^ 
siderably fagged and heated, and Clerk, seeing the 
smoke of a clachun a little way before them, eja- 
culated — '^ How agreeable if we should here fall in 
with one of those signposts where a red lion predo- 
minates over a punch-4K)wl !" The phrase happened 
to tickle Scott's fancy — he often introduced it on 
similar occasions afterwards — and at the distance of 
twenty years Mr Clerk was at no loss to recognise an 
old acquaintance in the '^ huge bear" which '^ predo* 
minates" over the stone basin in the courtyard of 
Baron Bradwardine. 

I believe the longest stay he made this autumn 
was at Meigle in Forfarshire^ the seat of Patrick 
Murray of Simprim, a gentleman whose enthusiastic 
passion for antiquities, and especially military anti- 
quities, had peculiarly endeared him both to Scott 
and Clerk. Here Adam Fergusson, too, was of the 
party; and I have often heard them each and all 
dwell on the thousand scenes of adventure and mer- 
riment which diversified that visit. In the village 
churchyard, close beneath Mr Murray's gardens, tra- 



Jt 



CBAIJiGI^E. 293 

he had assigned to Fithe tomh of Queen Guenever; 
the duel with Rodepict abounds in objects of historical 
marks in the <^ast them they spent their wandering 
many hosgi^ their evenings passed in the joyous fes- 
^^^^Vof a wealthy young bachelor's establishment, 
^'sometimes under the roofs of neighbours less 
refined than their host, the Bahmwhapples of the 
^^ Braes of Angus. From Meigle they made a trip to 

%^ Dunottar Castle, the ruins of the huge old fortress 

"•t of the Earls Marischall, and it was in the church- 

tf' yard of that place that Scott then saw for the first 

^ and last time Peter Paterson, the living Old Morta- 

r lity' He and Mr Walker, the minister of the parish, 

^^ found the poor man refreshing the epitaphs on the 

"^^ tombs of certain Cameronians who had fallen under 

*^ the oppressions of James the Second's brief insanity* 

^ Being invited into the manse after dinner to take a 

^^ glass of whisky punch, " to which he was supposed 

to have no objections," he joined the minister's party 
^ accordingly; but " he was in bad humour," says Scott, 

jj^ '^ and, to use his own phrase, had no freedom for 

^ conversation. His spirit had been sorely vexed by 

^ hearing, in a certain Aberdonian kirk, the psalmody 

i directed by a pitch-pipe or some similar instrument, 

i which was to Old Mortality the abomination of abo- 

i minations." 

It was also while he had his headquarters at 
Meigle at this time, thai Scott visited for the first 



294 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

time GlammiSi the residence of the Earls of Strath- 
more, by far the noblest specimen of the real feudal 
castle, entire and perfect, that had as yet come under 
his inspection. What its aspect was when he first 
saw it, and how grievously he lamented the change 
it had undergone when he revisited it some years 
afterwards, he has recorded in one of the most 
striking passages that I think ever came from his pen. 
Commenting, in his Essay on Landscape Gardening 
(1828), on the proper domestic ornaments of the 
Castle Pleasafmcey he has this beautiful burst of 
lamentation over the barbarous innovations of the 
CapahUity men : — " Down went many a trophy of 
old magnificence, courtyard, ornamented enclosure, 
fosse, avenue, barbican, and every external muni- 
ment of battled wall and flanking tower, out of the 
midst of which the ancient dome, rising high above 
all its characteristic accompaniments, and seemingly 
girt round by its appropriate defences, which again 
circled each other in their different gradations, 
looked, as it should, the queen and mistress of the 
surrounding coimtry. It was thus that the huge 
old tower of Glammis, ' whose birth tradition notes 
not,' once showed its lordly head above seven cir- 
cles (if I remember aright) of defensive boundaries* 
through which the friendly guest was admitted, and 
at each of which a suspicious person was unques- 
tionably put to his answer. A disciple of Kent had 



i 



GLAMMIS. 295 

the cruelty to render this splendid old mansion (the 
more modem part of which was the work of Inigo 
Jones) more parkish, as he was pleased to call it ; 
to raze all those exterior defences, and hring his 
mean and paltry gravel -walk up to the very door 
from which, deluded by the name, one might have 
imagined Lady Macbeth (with the form and features 
of Siddons) issuing forth to receive King Duncan. 
It is thirty years and upwards since I have seen 
Glammis, but I have not yet forgotten or forgiven 
the atrocity which, under pretence of improvement, 
deprived that lordly place of its appropriate accom- 
paniments, 

* Leaving an ancient dome and towers like these 
Beggar'd and outraged/"* 

The night he spent at the yet unprofaned Glammis 
in 1793 was, as he elsewhere says, one of the " two 
periods distant from each other" at which he could 
recollect experiencing << that degree of superstitious 
awe which his countrymen call eerieJ* " The heavy 
pile," he writes, << contains much in its appearance, 
and in the traditions connected with it, impressive to 
the imagination. It was the scene of the murder of 
a Scottish King of great antiquity — not indeed the 
gracious Duncan, with whom the name naturally 

* Wordsworth's Sonnet on Neidpath Castle. 



296 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

associates itself, but Malcolm 11. It contains also a 
curious monument of the peril of feudal times, being 
a secret chamber, the entrance of which, by the law 
or custom of the family, must only be known to 
three persons at once, namely, the Earl of Strath- 
more, his heir-apparent, and any third person whom 
they may take into their confidence. The extreme 
antiquity of the building is vouched by the thickness 
of the walls, and the wild straggling arrangement of 
the accommodation within doors. As the late Earl 
seldom resided at Glammis, it was when I was there 
but half furnished, and that with moveables of great 
antiquity, which, with the pieces of chivalric armour 
hanging on the walls, greatly contributed to the ge- 
neral effect of the whole. After a very hospitable 
reception from the late Peter Proctor, seneschal of 
the castle, I was conducted to my apartment in a 
distant part of the building. I must own, that when 
I heard door after door shut, after my conductor had 
retired, I began to consider myself as too far from 
the living, and somewhat too near the dead. We 
had passed through what is called the Kin^s Room, 
a vaulted apartment, garnished with stag's antlers 
and other trophies of the chase, and said by tradition 
to be the spot of Malcolm's murder, and I had an 
idea of the vicinity of t^e castle chapel. In spite 
of the truth of history, the whole night scene in 
Macbeth's Castle rushed at once upon me, and 



GLAMMIS. 297 

struck my mind more forcibly than even when I 
have seen its terrors represented by John Kemble 
land his inimitable sister. In a word, I experienced 
sensations which, though not remarkable for timidity 
or superstition, did not fail to affect me to the point 
of being disagreeable, while they were mingled at the 
same time with a strange and indescribable sort of 
pleasure, the recollection of which affords me gratifi- 
cation at this moment." * 

He alludes here to the hospitable reception which 
had preceded the mingled sensations of this eerie 
iiight; but one of his notes on Waverley touches 
this not unimportant part of the story more dis- 
tinctly ; for we are there informed, that the silver 
bear of Tully- Veolan, " the poculum potatorittm of 
the valiant baron," had its prototype at Glammis -— 
a massive beaker of silver, double gilt, moulded into 
the form of a ^ton, the name and bearing of the Earls 
of Strathmore, and containing about an English pint 
of wine. " The author," he says, " ought perhaps to 
be ashamed of recording that he had the honour of 
swallowing the contents of the lion, and the recol- 
lection of the feat suggested the story of the Bear 
of Bradwardine." 

From this pleasant tour, so rich in its results, 
Scott returned in time to attend the autumnal assizes 

• Letters on Demonology and WitcKcraft, p. 398. 



298 LIFE OF SIB WALTEE SCOTT. 

at Jedburgh, on which occasion he made his first 
appearance as counsel in a criminal court ; and had 
the satisfaction of helping a veteran poacher and 
sheepstealer to escape through some of the meshes 
of the law. " You're a lucky sconndreV Scott 
whispered to his client, when the verdict was pro- 
nounced. << I'm just o' your mind," quoth the des- 
perado, << and 111 send ye a maukin* the mom, man." 
I am not sure whether it was at these assizes or the 
next in the same town, that he had less success in 
the case of a certain notorious housebreaker. The 
man, however, was well aware that no skill could 
have baffled the clear evidence against him, and was, 
after his fashion, grateful for such exertions as had 
been made in his behalf. He requested the young 
advocate to visit him once more before he left the 
place. Scott's curiosity induced him to accept this 
invitation, and his friend, as soon as they were alone 
together in the condemned ceUy said — ''I am very 
sorry, sir, that I have no fee- to oiFer you — so let 
me beg your acceptance of two Ints of advice which 
may be useful perhaps when you come to have a 
house of your own. I am done with practice, you 
see, and here is my legacy. Never keep a large 
watchdog out of doors — we can always silence them 
cheaply — indeed if it be a dog, 'tis easier than 

* (. f. a hare. 



J 



JEDBURGH ASSIZES. 299 

whistling — but tie a little tight yelping terrier 
within ; and secondly, put no trust in nice, clever, 
gimcrack locks — the only thing that bothers us is a 
huge old heavy one, no matter how simple the con- 
struction, — and the ruder and rustier the key, so 
much the better for the housekeeper." I remember 
hearing him tell this story some thirty years after at 
a Judges' dinner at Jedburgh, and he summed it up 
with a rhyme — " Ay, ay, my lord," (I think he 
addressed his friend Lord Meadowbank) — 

* Yelping terrier, rusty key. 
Was Walter Soott s best Jeddart fee.' " 

At these, or perhaps the next assizes, he was also 
counsel in an appeal case touching a cow which his 
client had sold as sound, but which the court below 
(the sheriff) had pronounced to have what is called 
the cliers — a disease analogous to glanders in a 
horse. In opening his case before Sir David Rae, 
Lord Eskgrove, Scott stoutly maintained the heal- 
thiness of the cow, who, as he said, had merely a 
cough. " Stop there," quoth the judge ; " I have 
had plenty of healthy kye in my time, but I never 
heard of ane of them coughing. A coughin' cow ! — 
that will never do — sustain the sheriff's judgment, 
and decern." 

A day or two after this Scott and his old com- 
panion were again on their way into Liddesdale, 



300 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

and " just," says the Shortreed Memorandum, " as 
we were passing Jjy Singdon, we saw a grand herd 
o' cattle a' feeding hy the roadside, and a fine young 
bullock, the best in the whole lot, was in the midst 
of them, coughing lustily. * Ah,' said Scott, * what 
a pity for my client that old Eskgrove had not taken 
Singdon on his way to the town. That bonny crea- 
ture would have saved us — 

'* A Daniel come to judgment, yea a Daniel ; 
O wise young judge, how I do honour thee ! *' 



" To Patrick Murray ofSimprim, Esq^ MeigU* 

" Rosebank, near Kelso, Sept. 13, 1793. 
" Dear Murray, 

" I would have let fly an epistle at you long 
ere this, had I not known I should have some diffi- 
culty in hitting so active a traveller, who may in 
that respect be likened unto a bird of passage. Were 
vou to follow the simile throughout, I might soon 
expect to see you winging your way to the southern 
climes, instead of remaining to wait the approach 
of winter in the colder regions of the north. Se- 
riously, I have been in weekly hopes of hearing of 
your arrival in the Merse, and have been qualifying 
mpelf by constant excursions to be your Border 
Cicerone. 
<< As the facetious Linton will no doubt make one 



ROSEBANK — SEPTEMBER 1793. 301 

of yoar party, I have got by heart for his amuse- 
ment a reasonable number of Border ballads, most 
of them a little longer than Chevy Chase, which I 
intend to throw in at intervals, just by way of se- 
curing my share in the conversation. As for yote, 
as I know your picturesque turn, I can be in this 
country at no loss how to cater for your entertain- 
ment, especially if you would think of moving before 
the fall of the leaf. I believe with respect to the 
real To JKcUon, few villages can surpass that near 
which I am now writing ; and as to your rivers, it 
is part of my creed that the Tweed and Teviot 
yield to none in the world, nor do I fear that even 
in yeur eyes, which have been feasted on classic 
ground, they will greatly sink in comparison with 
the Tiber or Po. Then for antiquities, it is true we 
have got no temples or heathenish fanes to show ; 
but if substantial old castles and ruined abbeys will 
serve in their stead, they are to be found in abun- 
dance. So much for Linton and you. As for Mr 
Robertson,* I don't know quite so well how to bribe 
him. We had indeed lately a party of strollers here, 
who might in some degree have entertained him, 

* Dr Robertson was tutor to the Laird of Simprim, and after- 
wards minister of Meigle — a man of great worth, and an excel- 
lent scholar. In his younger days he was fond of the theatre, 
and encouraged and directed Simprim, Grogg, Linton 8^ Co. in 
their histrionic diversions. — [1839.] 



302 LIFE OF SIS WALTER SCOTT. 

u e, in case he felt no compassion for the horrid 
and tragical murders which they nightly committed 
— hut now, AliM Sir ! the players he gone. 

'< I am at present very uncertain as to my own 
motions, but I still hope to be northwards again 
before the commencement of the session, which 
(d — n it) is beginning to draw nigher than I could 
wish. I would esteem myself greatly favoured by a 
few lines informing me of your motions when they 
are settled ; since visiting you, should I go north, 
or attending you if you come this way, are my two 
grand plans of amusement. 

*' What think you of our politics now? Had 
I been within reach of you, or any of the chosen, I 
suspect the taking of Valenciennes would have been 
sustained as a reason for examining the contents of 
t'other bottle, which has too often suffered for slighter 
pretences. I have Httle doubt, however, that by the 
time we meet in glory (terrestrial glory I mean) 
Dunkirk will be an equally good apology. Adieu, 
my good friend ; remember me kindly to Mr Ro- 
bertson, to Linton, and to the Baronet. I under- 
stand both these last intend seeing you soon. I am 
very sincerely yours, 

Walter Scott.'* 

The winter of 1793-4 appears to have been passed 
like the preceding one ; the German class resumed 



WINTER OP 1793-4. 303 

their sittings ; Scott spoke in his debating club on 
the questions of Parliamentary Reform and the In- 
Tiolability of the Person of the First Magistrate, 
which the circumstances of the time had invested 
with extraordinary interest, and in both of which he 
no doubt took the side adverse to the principles of 
the English, and the practice of the French Libe- 
rals. His love-afiair continued on exactly the same 
footing as before — and for the rest, like the yoimg 
heroes in Redgauntlet, he ^^ swept the boards of 
the Parliament House with the skirts of his gown ; 
laughed, and made others laugh; drank claret at 
Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's, and eat oysters in 
the Covenant Close." On his desk " the new novel 
most in repute lay snugly intrenched beneath Star's 
Institute,, or an open volume of Decisions;" and 
his dressing-table was littered with '< old play-bills, 
letters respecting a meeting of the Faculty, Rules 
of the Speculative, Syllabus of Lectures — all the 
miscellaneous contents of a young advocate's poc- 
ket, which contains every thing but briefs and bank- 
notes." His professional occupation was still very 
slender; but he took a lively interest in the pro- 
ceedings of the criminal court, and more especially 
in those arising out of the troubled state of the 
public feeling as to politics. 

In the spring of 1794 I find him writing to his 
friends in Roxburghshire with great exultation about 



306 LIFE OP SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

mean mock-military) achievements, let me not fail 
to congratulate you and the country on the real 
character you have agreed to accept. Rememher, 
in case of real action, I shall heg the honour of ad- 
mission to your troop as a volunteer." 

One of the theatrical party, Sir Alexander Wood, 
whose notes lie before me, says — " Walter was cer- 
tainly our Coryphaeus, and signalized himself splendidly 
in this desperate fray; and nothing used afterwards to 
afford him more delight than dramatizing its incidents. 
Some of the most efficient of our allies were persons 
previously unknown to him, and of several of these 
whom he had particularly observed, he never lost 
sight afterwards. There were, I believe, cases in 
which they owed most valuable assistance in life to 
his recollection of the playhouse row^ To this last 
part of Sir Alexander's testimony. I can also add 
mine ; and I am sure my worthy friend, Mr Donald 
M*Lean, W. S., will gratefully confirm it. When 
that gentleman became candidate for some of£c« in 
the Exchequer, about 1822 or 1823, and Sir Walter's 
interest was requested on his behalf, — " To be sure!" 
said he; " did not he sound the charge upon Paddy? 
Can I ever forget Donald's Sticks hy G^-t»''* 

On the 9th May 1794, Charles Kerr of Abbot- 

* According to a friendly critic, one of tlie Liberals exdaimed, 
as the row was tliickening, " No Blows I" — and Donald, suiting 
the action to the word, responded, ** Plows by !" — 1839. 



POLITICAL TRIALS 1794. 307 

rule writes to him — " I was last night at Rose- 
bank, and your uncle told me he had been giving 
you a very long and very sage lecture upon the 
occasion of these Edinburgh squabbles ; I am happy 
to hear they are now at an end. They were rather 
of the serious cast, and though you encountered them 
with spirit and commendable resolution, I, with your 
uncle, should wish to see your abilities conspicuous 
on another theatre." The same gentleman, in his 
next letter (June 3d), congratulates Scott on having 
^'^ seen his name in the newspaper,'' viz; as coun- 
sel for another Roxburghshire laird, by designation 
Bedrule. Such, no doubt, was Abbotrule^« " other 
theatre." 

Scott spent the long vacation of this year chiefly 
in Roxburghshire, but again visited Keir, Cambus- 
more, and others of his friends in Perthshire, and 
came to Edinburgh, early in September, to be pre- 
sent at the trials of Watt and Downie, on a charge 
of high treason. Watt seems to have tendered his 
services to Government as a spy upon the Society 
of the Friends of the People in Edinburgh, but ul- 
timately, considering himself as underpaid^ to have 
embraced, to their wildest extent, the schemes he 
had become acquainted with in the course of this 
worthy occupation ; and he, and' one Downie a 
mechanic, were now arraigned as having taken a 
prominent part in the organizing of a plot for a 



308 LIFE OF SIE WALTEE SCOTT. 

general rising in Edinburgh, to seize the Castle, the 
Bank, the persons of the Judges, and proclaim a 
Provisional Republican Government ; all which was 
supposed to have been arranged in concert with the 
Hardies, Thelwalls, Holcrofts, and so forth, who 
were a few weeks later brought to trial in London, 
for an alleged conspiracy to <' summon delegates to 
a National Convention, with a view to subvert the 
Government, and levy war upon the King." The 
English prisoners were acquitted, but Watt and 
Downie were not so fortunate. Scott writes as fol- 
lows to his aunt. Miss Christian Rutherford, then 
at Ashestiel, in Selkirkshire ; — 

« Advocates' Library, 5th Sept. 1794. 

" My dear Miss Christy will perceive, from the 
date of this epistle, that I have accomplished my 
purpose of coming to town to be present at the trial 
of the Edinburgh traitors. I arrived here on Mon- 
day evening from Kelso, and was present at Watt's 
trial on Wednesday, which displayed to the public 
the most atrocious and dehberate plan of viUany 
which has occurred, perhaps, in the annals of Great 
Britain. I refer you for particulars to the papers, 
and shall only add, that the equivocations and peijury 
of the witnesses (most of them being accompHces 
in what they called the great plan) set the abihties 
of Mr Anstruther, the King's counsel, in the most 



POLITICAL TBIALS — 1794. 309 

striking point of view. The patience and temper 
with which he tried them on every side, and screwed 
out of them the evidence they were so anxious to 
conceal, showed much knowledge of human nature ; 
and the art with which he arranged the information 
he received, made the trial, upon the whole, the most 
interesting I ever was present at. Downie's trial is 
just now going forwards over my head ; hut as the 
evidence is just the same as formerly hrought against 
Watt, is not so interesting. You will easily believe 
that on Wednesday my curiosity was too much ex- 
cited to retire at an early hour, and> indeed, I sat in 
the Court from seven in the morning till two the 
next morning; but as I had provided myself with 
some cold meat and a bottle of wine, I contrived to 
support the fatigue pretty well. It strikes me, upon 
the whole, that the plan of these miscreants might, 
from its very desperate and improbable nature, have 
had no small chance of succeeding, at least as far as 
concerned cutting off the soldiers, and obtaining pos- 
session of the banks, besides shedding the blood of 
the most distinguished inhabitants. There, I think, 
the evil must have stopped, unless they had further 
support than has yet appeared^ Stooks Was the 
prime mover of the whole, and the person who sup- 
plied the money; and our theatrical disturbances 
are found to have formed one link of the chain. So, 
I have no doubt, Messrs Stooks, Burk, &c., would 
have found out a new way of paying old debts. The 



310 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

people are perfectly quiescent upon this grand occa- 
sion, and seem to interest themselves very Httle in 
the fate of their soi-disant friends. The Edinburgh 
volunteers make a respectable and formidable appear- 
ance already. They are exercised four hours almost 
every day, with all the rigour of military discipline. 
The grenadier company consists entirely of men 
above six feet. So much for public news. 

" As to home intelligence — you know that my 
mother and Anne had projected a jaunt to Inver- 
leithen ; fate, however, had destined otherwise. The 
intended day of departure was ushered in by a most 
complete deluge, to which, and the consequent dis- 
appointment, our proposed travellers did not submit 
with that Christian meekness which might have be- 
seemed. In short, both within and without doors^ 
it was a devil of a day. The second was like unto 
it. The third day came a post, a killing post,* and 
in the shape of a letter from this fountain of health, 
informed us no lodgings were to be had there ; so, 
whatever be its virtues, or the grandeur attend- 
ing a journey to its streams, we might as well have 
proposed to visit the river Jordan, or the walls of 
Jericho. Not so our heroic John; he has been 
arrived here for some time (much the same as when 
he went away), and has formed the desperate re- 

• " The third day comes a frost, a killing frost." 

K. Htnry VIII, 



LETTER TO MISS RUTHERFORD. 311 

solution of riding out with me to Kelso to-morrow 
morning. I have stayed a day longer, waiting for 
the arrival of a pair of new hoots and huckskin &cs., 
in which the soldier is to he equipt. I ventured to 
hint the convenience of a roll of diaculum plaister, 
and a hox of the most approved horseman-salve, in 
which recommendation our doctor* warmly joined. 
His impatience for the journey has heen somewhat 
cooled hy some inclination yesterday displayed hy 
his charger (a pony belonging to Anne) to lay 
his warlike rider in the dust — a purpose he had 
nearly effected. He next mounted Queen Mab, who 
treated him with little more complaisance, and, in 
carters' phrase, would neither hap nor wynd till 
she got rid of him. Seriously, however, if Jack has 
not returned covered with laurels, a crop which the 
Rockf no longer produces, he has brought back all 
his own good-nature, and a manner considerably im- 
proved, so that he is at times very agreeable company. 
Best love to Miss R., Jean, and Anne (I hope they 
are improved at the battledore), and the boys, not 
forgetting my friend Archy, though least not last in 
my remembrance. Best compliments to the Colonel.^ 

* Dr Rutherford. 

t Ci^tain John Scott had been for some time with his regiment 
at Gibraltar. 

\ Colonel Russell of Ashestiel, married to a sister of Scott*8 
mother. 



312 UFE OF SIB WALTBB SCOTT. 

I shall remember with pleasure Ashestiel hospitality, 
and not without a desire to put it to the proof next 
year. Adieu, ma chere amie. When you write, 
direct to Rosehank, and I shall be a good boy, and 
write yon another sheet of nonsense soon. Ali 
friends here welL Ever yours affectionately, 

Walter Scott." 

The letter, of wbidi the following is an extract, 
must have been written in October or November — 
Scott having been in Liddesdale, and again in Perth- 
shire, during the interval. It is worth quoting for 
the little domestic allusions with which it concludes^ 
and which every one who has witnessed the disci- 
pline of a Presbyterian family of the old schocd, at 
the time of preparation for the Comffmniou, will 
perfectly understand. Scott's &ther, though on 
particular occasions he could permit himself like 
Saunders Fairford, to j^y the part of a good Am- 
phytrion, was habitually ascetic in his habits. I have 
heard his son tell, that it was common with him, if 
any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it 
again, and say, — <> Yes, it is too good, bairns," and 
dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate. It is 
easy, therefore, to imagine with what rigidity he 
must have enforced the ultra-Catholic severities whieb 
marked, in those days, the yearly or half-yearly re^ 
treat of the descendants of John Knox. 



LETTER TO MISS lUJTHESFORD. 313 



<< To Miss Christian Rutherfhrd, Ashestiel 

" Previous to my ramble, I stayed a single day in 
town, to witness the exit of the ci-devant Jacobin^ 
Mr Watt. It was a very solemn scene, but t^e 
pusillanimity of the unfortunate victim was asto- 
nishing', considering the boldness of his nefarious 
plans. It is matter of general regret that his asso- 
ciate Downie should have received a reprieve, whidi, 
I understand, is now prolonged for a second month, 
I suppose to wait the issue of the London trials. 
Our volunteers are now completely embodied, and 
notwithstanding the heaviness of their dress, have a 
martial and striking appearance. Their accuracy in 
firing uid manoeuvring excites the surprise of mili- 
tary gentlemen, who are the best judges of their 
merit in that way. Tom is very proud of the grena- 
dier company, to which he belongs, which has indis- 
putably carried off the palm upon all public occasions. 
And now, give me leave to ask you whether the 
approaching winter does not remind you of your 
snug parlour in George's Street ? Do you not feel 
a little uncomfortable when you see 

* how bleak and bare 
He wanders oer the heights of Yairf* 

Amidst all this regard for your accommodation, don't 
suppose I am devoid of a little self-interest when I 



314 LIFE OF Snt WAI.TBK SCOTT* 

press jour speedy ictiim to Aidd Redde, for 1 am 
really tiring excessiTely to see the said parlour i^ain 
inhabited. Besides that, I want the assistance of 
yoor eloquence to omivinoe my honoured firthec that 
nature did not mean me either for a Tagabond or 
travelling merchanty when she honoured me with the 
wandering propensity lately so conspicuously displayed. 
I saw D'- yesterday, who ia welL I did not choose 
to intrude upon the little lady, this being sermon 
week ; for the same reason we are looking very re- 
ligious and very sour at home. However, it is with 
some folky selon ks regies, that in proportion as 
they are pure themselves, they are entitled to render 
uncomfortable those whom they consider as less 
perfect. Best love to Miss R., cousins and friends in 
general, and believe me ever most sincerely yours, 

Walter Scott." 

In July 1795, a young lad, James Niven by name> 
who had served for some time with excellent charac- 
ter on board a ship of war, and been discharged in 
consequence of a wound which disabled one of his 
hands, had the misfortune, in firing off a toy cannon 
in one of the narrow wynds of Edinburgh, to kill 
on the spot David Knox, one of the attendants of 
the Court of Session; a button, or some other hard 
substance, having been accidentally inserted with his 
cartridge. Scott was one of his counsel when be was 
arraigned for murder, and had occasion to draw up a 



LAW F AF£R 1793. 3 1 5 

written argument dr information for the prisoner, 
from which I shall make a short quotation. Con- 
sidered as a whole, the production seems both crude 
and clumsy, but the following passages have, I think, 
several traces of the style of thought and language 
which he afterwards made familiar to the world: — 

^^ Murder,'* he writes, ^' or the premeditated slaughter 
of a citizen, h a crime of so deep and scarlet a dye, that 
there is scarce a nation to be found in which it has not, 
from the earliest period, been deemed worthy of a capital 
punishment. ^ He who sheddeth man*s blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed,* is a general maxim which has 
received the assent of all times and countries. But it is 
equally certain, that even the rude legislators of former 
days soon perceived, that the death of one man may be 
occasioned by another, without the slayer himself being 
the proper object of the lex talionis. Such an accident 
may happen either by the carelessness of the killer, or 
through that excess and vehemence of passion to which 
humanity is incident. In either case, though blameable, 
he ought not to be confounded with the cool and deli- 
berate assassin, and the species of criminality attaching 
itself to those acts has been distinguished by the term 
4olu8^ in opposition to the milder term culpa. Again, 
there may be a third species of homicide, in which the 
perpetrator being the innocent and unfortimate cause of 
casual misfortune, becomes rather an object of compas- 
sion than punishment. 

*^ Admitting there may have been a certain degree of 
culpability in the panel's conduct, still there is one cir- 



^16 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

cumstance which pleads strongly in his favour, so as to 
preclude all presumption of dole. This is the frequent 
practice, whether proper or improper, of using this 
amusement in the streets. It is a matter of puhlic no- 
toriety, that boys of all ages and descriptions are, or at 
least till the late very proper proclamation of the magis- 
trates were, to be seen every evening in almost every 
comer of this city, amusing themselves with fire-arms 
and small cannons, and that without being checked or 
interfered with. When the panel, a poor ignorant raw 
lad, lately discharged from a ship of war — certainly not 
the most proper school to learn a prudent aversion to 
unlucky or mischievous practices — observed the sons of 
gentlemen of the first respectabiHty engaged in such 
amusements, unchecked by their parents or by the ma- 
gistrates, surely it can hardly be expected that he should 
discover that in imitating them in so common a practice, 
he was constituting himself hosHs kumam generis^ a 
wretch the pest and scourge of mankind. 

" There is, no doubt, attached to every even the most 
innocent of casual slaughter, a certain degree of blame, 
inasmuch as almost every thing of the kind might have 
been avoided had the slayer exhibited the strictest degree 
of diligence. A well-known and authentic story will 
illustrate the proposition. A young gentleman, just 
married to a young lady of whom he was passionatel j 
fond, in affectionate trifling presented at her a pbtol, 
of which he had drawn the charge some days before. 
The lady, entering into the joke, desired him to fire : 
he did so, and shot her dead; the pistol having been 
again charged by his servant without his knowledge. 
Can any one read this story, and feel any emotion but 



LAW PAPER 1796. 317 

that of sympathy towards the unhappy husband ? Can 
they ever connect the case with an idea of punishment ? 
Yet, divesting it of these interesting circumstances which 
act upon the imagination, it b precisely that of the 
panel at your Lord^ps* bar ; and though no one will 
pretend to say that such a homicide is other than casual, 
yet there is not the slightest question but it might have 
been avoided had the killer taken the precaution of ex- 
amining his piece. But this is not the degree of culpa 
which can raise a misfortune to the pitch of a crime. 
It is only an instance that no accident can take place 
without its afterwards being discovered that the chief 
actor might have avoided committing it, had he been 
gifted with the spirit of prophecy, or with such an ex- 
treme degree of prudence as is almost equally rare. 

^^ In the instance of shooting at butts, or at a bird, 
the person killed must have been somewhat in the line 
previous to the discharge of the shot, otherways it could 
never have come near him. The shooter must therefore 
have been guilty culpcB lems seu levissma in firing while 
the deceased was in such a situation. In like manner, 
it is difficult to conceive how death should happen in con- 
sequence of a boxing or wrestling match, without some 
excess upon the part of the killer. Nay, in the exercise 
of the martial amusements of our forefathers, even by 
royal commission, should a champion be slain in running 
his barriers, or performing his tournament, it could 
scarcely happen without some culpa seu levis seu lems- 
sima on the part of his antagonist. Yet all these are 
enumerated in the English law-books as instances of 
casual homicide only; and we may therefore safely con- 



318 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

elude, that by the law of the sister country a slight degree 
of blame will not subject the slayer per inforttmium to 
the penalties of culpable homicide. 

^^ Guilt, as an object of punishment, has its origin in 
the mind and intention of the actor; and therefore, 
where that is wanting, there is no proper object of chas- 
tisement. A madman, for example, can no more properly 
be said to be g^ty of murder than the sword with which 
he commits it, both being equally incapable of intending 
injury. In the present case, m like manner, although 
it ought no doubt to be matter of deep sorrow and con- 
trition to the panel that his folly should have occasioned 
the loss of life to a fellow-creature ; yet as that folly can 
neither be termed malice, nor yet doth amount to a gross 
negligence, he ought rather to be pitied than condemned. 
The fact done can nerer be recalled, and it rests with 
your Lordships to consider the case of this unfortunate 
young man, who has served his country in an humble 
though useful station, — deserved such a character as is 
given him in the letter of his officers, — and been dis- 
abled in that service. You will best ju(%e how (con- 
sidering he has suffered a confinement of six months) he 
can in humanity be the object of further or severer 
punishment, for a deed of which his mind at least, if not 
his hand, is guiltless. When a case is attended vdih some 
nicety, your Lordships will allow mercy to mcline the 
balance of justice, well considering with the legislator 
of the east, ^ It is better ten g^ty should escape than 
that one innocent man should perish in his innocence/ '* 

The young sailor was acquitted. 



LOVE-AFFAIB, 319 

To return for a moment to Scott's love-aifeir. I 
find him writing as follows, in March 1795, to his 
cousin, William Scott, now Laird of Raehurn, who 
was then in the East Indies: — " The lady you al- 
lude to has been in town all this winter, and going 
a good deal into public, which has not in the least 
altered the meekness of her manners. Matters, you 
see, stand just as they did." 

To another friend he writes thus, from Rosebank, 
on the 23d of August 1795: — 

^< It gave me the highest satisfaction to find, by 
the receipt of your letter of the 14th current, that 
you have formed precisely the same opinion with me, 

both with regard to the interpretation of *8 

letter as highly flattering and favourable, and to the 
mode of conduct I ought to pursue — for, after all, 
what she has pointed out is the most prudent line of 
conduct for us both, at least till better days, which, I 
think myself now entitled to suppose, she, as well as 
I myself, will look forward to with pleasure. If you 
were surprised at reading the important billet, you 
may guess how agreeably I was so at receiving it; 
for I had, to anticipate disappointment, struggled 
to suppress every rising gleam of hope; and it 
would be very difficult to describe the mixed feelings 
her letter occasioned, which, entre nous, terminated 
in a very hearty fit of crying. I read over her 
epistle about ten times a-day, and always with new 



320 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

admiration of her generosity and candour — and as 
often take shame to myself for the mean suspicions, 
which, after knowing her so long, I could listen to, 
while endeavouring to guess how she would conduct 
herself. To tell you the truth, I cannot hut confess 
that my amowr propre^ which one would expect 
should have been exalted, has sufiered not a little 
upon this occasion, through a sense of my own «»»- 
toortJUness, pretty similar to that which afflicted 
Linton upon sitting down at Keir's table. I ought 
perhaps to tell you, what, indeed you will perceive 
from her letter, that I was always attentive, while 
consulting with you upon the subject of my declara- 
tion, rather to under than over-rate the extent of 
our intimacy. By the way, I must not omit men- 
tioning the respect in which I hold your knowledge 
of the fair sex, and your capacity of advising in these 
matters, since it certainly is to your encouragement 
that I owe the present situation of my sSairs. I 
wish to God, that, since you have acted as so useful 
an auxiliary during my attack, which has succeeded 
in bringing the enemy to terms, you would next sit 
down before some fortress yourself, and were it as 
impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar, I should, not- 
withstanding, have the highest expectations of your 
final success. Not a line from poor Jack — What 
can he be doing? Moping, I suppose, about some 
watering-place, and deluging his guts with specifics 



LETTER FBOM B0SE6ANK. 321 

of every kind — or lowering and snorting in one cor- 
ner of a post-chaise, with Kennedy, as upright and 
cold as a poker, stuck into the other. As for Linton, 
and Crab, I anticipate with pleasure their marvel- 
lous adventures, in the course of which Dr Black's 
self-denying ordinance will run a shrewd chance of 
being neglected.* They will be a source of fun for 
the winter evening conversations. Methinks I see 
the pair upon the mountains of Tipperary — John 
with a beard of three inches, united and blended with 
his shaggy black locks, an ellwand-looking cane with 
a gilt head in his hand, and a bundle in a handker- 
chief over his shoulder, exciting the cupidity of every 
Irish raparee who passes him, by his resemblance to 
a Jew pedlar who has sent forward his pack — Lin- 
ton, tired of trailing his long legs, exalted in state 
upon an Irish garron, without stirrups, and a halter 
on its head, tempting every one to ask — 

* Who is that upon the pony. 
So long, so lean, so raw, so bony?' *)* 

— calculating, as he moves along, the expenses of the 

* Crab was the nickname of a firiend who had accompanied 
Fergusson this summer on an Irish tour. Dr Black, celebrated 
for his discoveries in chemistry, was Adam Fergusson's uncle ; 
and had, it seems, given the* young travellers a strong admonition 
touching the dangers of Irish hospitality. 

-f These lines are part of a song on LittU-tony — I. e. the 
Parliamentary orator Littleton. They are quoted in Boswell's 
Life of Johnson, originally published in 1791. 

VOL. I. X 



322 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

salt hone — and griniUBg a ghastly smile, when the 
hoUow voice of his fellow-traveller observes — ^ God! 
Adam, if ye gang on at this rate, the eight shillings 
and sevenpence hal^nny will never carry us forward 
to my uncle's at Lisbum.' Enough of a thorough 
Irish expedition. 

<^ We have a great marriage towards here — Scott 
of Harden, and a daughter of Count Bruhl, the 
famous chess-player, a lady of sixteen quarters, half- 
sister to the Wyndhams. I wish they may come 
down soon, as we shall have fine racketing, of which 
I will, probably, get my share. I think of being in 
town sometime next month, but whether for good 
and all, or only for a visit, I am not certain. O for 
November! Our meeting will be a little embarrass- 
ing one. How will she look, &c. &c. &c., are the 
important subjects of my present conjectures — how 
different from what they were three weeks ago! I 
give you leave to laugh when I tell you seriously, I 
had begun to < dwindle, peak, and pine,' upon the 
subject — but now, after the charge I have received, 
it were a shame to resemble Pharoah's lean kine. If 
good living and plenty of exercise can avert that ca- 
lamity, I am in little danger of disobedience, and so, 
to conclude classically, 

" Dicite lo poean, et lo bis dicite poean! — 
^ Jubeo te bene valere, 

GUALTEEUS SCSOTT*" 



TRANSLATION OF LENOBE. 323 

I hftve had much hesitation about inserting the 
preceding letter, bat could not make up my mind to 
omit what seems to me a most exquisite revelation of 
the whole character of Scott at this critical period 
of his history, both literary and personal; — ^more 
especially of his habitual effort to suppress, as far 
as words were concerned, the more tender feelings, 
which were in no heart deeper than in his. 

It must, I think, have been, while he was in- 
dulging his vagabond vein, during the autumn of 
1795, that Mrs Barbauld paid her visit to Edinburgh, 
and entertained a party at Mr Dugald Stewart's, by 
reading Mr William Taylor's then unpublished ver- 
sion of Biirger's Lenore. In the essay on Imitation 
of Popular Poetry, the reader has a full account of 
the interest with which Scott heard, some weeks af- 
terwards, a friend's imperfect recollections of this per- 
formance; the anxiety with which he sought after a 
copy of the original German; the delight with which 
he at length perused it; and how, having just been 
reading the specimens of ballad poetry introduced 
into Lewis's Romance of The Monk, he called to 
mind the early facility of versification which had 
lain so long in abeyance, and ventured to promise 
his friend a rhymed translation of Lenore from his 
own pen. The friend in question was Miss Cran- 
stoun, afterwards Countess of Purgstall, the sister of 



324 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

his friend George Cranstoon, now Lord Corehouse. 
He began the task, he tells us, after supper, and did 
not retire to bed until he had finished it, having by 
that time worked himself into a state of excitement 
which set sleep at defiance. 

Next morning, before breakfast, he carried his 
MS. to Miss Cranstoun, who was not only delighted 
but astonished at it; for I have seen a letter of hers 
to a common friend in the country, in which she says 

" Upon my word, Walter Scott is going to turn 

out a poet — something of a cross I think between 
Bums and Gray." The same day he read it also to 
his friend Sir Alexander Wood, who retains a vivid 
recoUection of the high strain of enthusiasm into 
which he had been exalted by dwelling on the wild 
unearthly imagery of the German bard. '^ He read 
it over to me," says Sir Alexander, " in a very slow 
and solemn tone, and after we had said a few words 
about its merits, continued to look at the fire silent 
and musing for some minutes, until he at length 
burst out with ' I wish to Heaven I could get a 
skull and two cross-bones.' " Wood said, that if Scott 
would accompany him to the house of John BeU, the 
celebrated surgeon, he had no doubt this wish might 
be easily gratified. They went thither accordingly 
on the instant ^—T- Mr Bell smiled on hearing the 
object of their visit, and pointing to a closet, at the 



TRANSLATION OF LENORE. 325 

corner of his library, bade Walter enter and choose. 
From a well-furnished museum of mortality, he se- 
lected forthwith what seemed to him the handsomest 
skull and pair of cross-bones it contained, and wrap- 
ping- them in his handkerchief, carried the formidable 
bundle home to George's Square. The trophies 
were immediately mounted on the top of his little 
bookcase; and when Wood yisited him, after many 
years of absence from this country, he found them 
in possession of a similar position in his dressing- 
room at Abbotsford. 

All this occurred in the beginning of April 1796. 
A few days afterwards, Scott went to pay a visit at a 
country house, where he expected to meet the " lady 
of his love." Jane Anne Cranstoun was in the secret 
of his attachment, and knew, that however doubtful 

might be Miss 's feeling on that subject, she 

had a high admiration of Scott's abilities, and often 
corresponded with him on literary matters ; so, after 
he had left Edinburgh, it occurred to her that she 
might perhaps forward his views in this quarter, by 
presenting him in the character of a printed author. 
William Erskine being called into her councils, a few 
copies of the ballad were forthwith thrown off in the 
most elegant style, and one richly bound and blazoned 
followed Scott in the course of a few days to the 
country. The verses were read and approved of, 



326 LIFE OF 8IB WALTER SCOTT. 

and Miss Cranstoon at least flattered herself that he 
had not made his first appearance in types to no pur- 
pose. 

I onght to have mentioned before, that in June 
1795, he was appointed one of the curators of the 
Advocates' Library, an office always reserved for 
those members of the Faculty who have the reputa- 
tion of superior zeal in literary af&ii^. He had for 
colleagnes David Hume, the Professor of Scots Law, 
and Malcolm Laing, the historian; and his discharge 
of his functions must have given satisfaction, for I 
find him further nominated, in March 1796, toge- 
ther with Mr Robert Hodgson Cay — an ac<M>mplished 
gentleman, afterwards Judge of the Admiralty Court 
in Scotland — to ^ put the Facult/s cabinet of medals 
in proper arrangement." 

On the 4th of June 1796 (the birth-day of George 
IIL), there seems to have been a formidable riot in 
Edinburgh, and Scott is found again in the front. 
On the 6th, he writes as follows to his aunt, Chris- 
tian Rutherford, who was then in the north of Scot- 
land, and had meant to visit, among other places, 
the residence of the '' ch^re adorable." 

* This story was told by the Countess of Purgstall on her 
death-bed to Captain Basil Hall. See his Sckht Hainfeid, 
p. 333. 



king's birth-day — 1796. 327 

« Edinburgh, 5th June 1796. 

^< Ma Chere Amie, 

" Nothing doubting that your curiosity will be 
upon the tenters to hear the wonderful events of the 
long-expected 4th of June, I take the pen to inform 
you that not one worth mentioning has taken place. 
Were I inclined to prolixity, I might, indeed, nar- 
rate at length how near a thousand gentlemen (my- 
self among the number) offered their sendees to the 
magistrates to act as constables for the preservation 
of the peace — how their services were accepted — 
what fine speeches were made upon the occasion -^ 
how they were, furnished with pretty painted brown 
batons — how they were assembled in the aisle of the 
New Church, and treated with claret and sweetmeats 
— how Sir John Whiteford was chased by the mob, 
and how Tom, Sandy Wood, and I rescued him, and 
dispersed his tormentors d beaux coups de batons — 
how the Justice- Clerk's windows were broke by a 
few boys, and how a large body of constables and a 
press-gang of near two hundred men arrived, and 
were much disappointed at finding the coast entirely 
clear ; with many other matters of equal importance, 
but o( which you must be contented to remain in 
ignorance till you return to your castle. Seriously, 
everything, with the exception of the very trifling 
circumstances above mentioned, was perfectly quiet — 
much more so than during any King's birth-day I 



328 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

can recoUect. That very stillness, however, shows 
that something is brewing among our friends the 
Democrats, which they will take their own time of 
bringing forward. By the wise precautions of the 
magistrates, or rather of the provost, and the spirited 
conduct of the gentlemen, I hope their designs will 
be frustrated. Our association meets to-night, when 
we are to be divided into districts according to the 
place of our abode, places of rendezvous and captains 
named ; so that, upon the hoisting of a flag on the 
Tron-steeple, and ringing out all the large bells, we 
can be on duty in less than five minutes. I am sorry 
to say that the complexion of the town seems to 
justify all precautions of this kind. I hope we shall 
demean ourselves as quiet and pectceahle magistrates ; 
and intend, for the purpose of learning the duties of 
my new office, to con diligently the instructions de- 
livered to the watch by our brother Dogberry, of 
facetious memory. So much for information. By 
way of enquiry, pray let me know — that is, when 
you find any idle hour — how you accomplished the 
perilous passage of her. Majestie's Ferry without the 
assistance and escort of your preux-chevalier, and 
whether you will receive them on your return — 
how Miss R. and you are spending your time, whe- 
ther stationary or otherwise — above all, whether 
you have been at ♦**♦♦*, and all the &cs. &cs. 
which the question involves. Having made out a 



J 



LOVE-AFFAIR. 329 

pretty long scratch, which, as Win Jenkins says, will 
take you some time to decipher, I shall only inform 
you farther, that I shall tire excessively till you re- 
turn to your shop. I beg to be remembered to Miss 
Kerr, and in particular to La Belle Jeanne. Best 
love to Miss Rutherford ; and believe me ever, my 
dear Miss Christy, sincerely and affectionately your 

Walter Scott." 

During the autumn of 1796 he visited again his 

favourite haunts in Perthshire and Forfarshire. It 

was in the course of this tour that he spent a day or 

two at Montrose with his old tutor Mitchell, and 

astonished and grieved that worthy Presbyterian by 

his zeal about witches and fairies.* The only letter 

of his, written during this expedition, that 1 have 

recovered, was addressed to another of his clerical 

I friends — one by no means of Mitchell's stamp — Mr 

I Walker, the minister of Dunnottar, and it is chiefly 

I occupied with an account of his researches at a vitri- 

I fied fort, in Eincardineshire, commonly called Lady 

f Fenelld!s Castle, and, according to tradition, the 

, scene of the murder of Kenneth III. While in the 

north, he visited also the residence of the lady who 

, had now for so many years been the object of his 

, attachment ; and that his reception was not adequate 

J to his expectations, may be gathered pretty clearly 

* See ante, p. 41. 



330 LIFE OF ant WAIiTEB SCOTT. 

from some expresskms in. a letter addrassed to hira 
when at Montrose by his friend and confidante. Miss 
Cranstaun : -^ 



'< To Walter ScotU Esq^ Post* Office, Montrose. 

" Deab Scott, — Far be it from me to affirm 
that there are no diyiners in the land. The voice of 
the people and the voice of God are loud in their 
testimony. Two years a^, when I was in the neigh- 
bourhood of Montrose, we had recourse for amuse- 
ment one evening to chiromancy, or, as the vulgar 
say, having our fortunes read ; and read mine were 
in such a sort, that either my letters must have been 
inspected, or the devil was by in his own proper 
person. I never mentioned the circumstance since, 
for obvious reasons ; but now that you are on the 
spot, I feel it my bounden duty to conjure you not 
to put your shoes rashly from off youi* feet, for you 
are not standing on holy ground. 

<< I bless the gods for conducting yo\ir poor dear 
soul safely to Perth. When I consider tiie wilds, 
the forests, the lakes, the rocks — and the spirits in 
which you must have whispered to their startled 
echoes, it amazeth me how you escaped. Had you 
but dismissed your little squire and Earwig,* and 

• A servant-boy and pony. 



LOVE-AFFAIR. 331 

spent a few days as Orlando would have done, all 
posterity might bave profited by it; but to trot 
quietly away without so much as one stanza to de- 
spair — never talk to me of love again — never, 
never, never ! I am dying for your ck>llection of 
exploits. When will you return? In the mean time, 
Heaven speed you! Be sober, and hope to the end. 

" William Taylor's translation of your ballad is 
published, and so inferior, that * I wonder we could 
tolerate it. Dugald Stewart read yours to ***** * 
the other day. When he came to the fetter dance,* 

* " ' Dost fear ? dost fear? — The moon shines dear ; — 
Dost fear to ride with me ? 
Hurrah 1 hurrah I the dead can ride ! ' — 
' Oh, William, let them be ! ' 

** < See there I see there ! What yonder swings 
And creaks 'mid whistling rain?' — 
Gibbet and steel, the accursed wheel, 
A murderer in his chain. 

*' * Hollo I thou felon, follow here« 
To bridal bed we ride ; 
And thou shalt prance a fetter dance 
Before me and my bride.* 

** And hurry, hurry ! clash, clash, clash ! 
The wasted form descends ; 
And fleet as wind, through hasel bush, 
The wild career attends. 



332 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

he looked up, and poor ****** was sitting with 
his hands nailed to his knees, and the big tears rolling 
down his innocent nose in so piteous a manner, that 
Mr Stewart could not help bursting out a-laughing. 
An angry man was **•***, I have seen an- 
other edition, too, but it is below contempt So 
many copies make the ballad famous, so that every 
day adds to your renown. 

'^ This here place is very, very dull. Erskine is 
in London ; my dear Thomson at Daily ; Macfarlan 
hatching Kant — and George* Fountainhall.f I have 
nothing more to tell you, but that I am most affec- 
tionately yours. Many an anxious thought I have 
about you. Farewell. — J. A. C." 

The affair in which this romantic creature took so 
lively an interest, was now approaching its end. It 
was known, before this autumn closed, that the lady 
of his vows had finally promised her hand to his 
amiable rival; and, when the fact was announced, 
some of those who knew Scott the best, appear to 



" Tramp, tramp I along the land thej rode ; 
Splash, splasli! along the sea; 
The scourge is red, the spur drops hlood, 
The flashing pehhles flee." 

* George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse. 
*|- Decisions by Lord Fountainhall. 



LOVE-AFFAIR. 333 

have entertained very serious apprehensions as to the 
effect which the disappointment might have upon his 
feelings. For example, one of those brothers of the 
Mountain wrote as follows to another of them, on 

the 12th October 1796 : — "Mr marries Miss 

. This is not good news. I always dreaded 

there was some self-deception on the part of our 
romantic friend, and I now shudder at the violence 
of his most irritable and ungovernable mind. Who 
is it that says, < Men have died, and worms have 
eaten them, but not for love ?' I hope sincerely it 
may be verified on this occasion." 

Scott had, however, in all likelihood, digested his 
agony during the solitary ride in the Highlands to 
which Miss Cranstoun's last letter alludes. 

Talking of this story with Lord Kinedder, I once 
asked him whether Scott never made it the subject 
of verses at the period. His own confession, that, 
even during the time when he had laid aside the habit 
of versification, he did sometimes commit " a sonnet 
on a mistress's eyebrow," had not then appeared. 
Lord Kinedder answered, — " O yes, he made many 
little stanzas about the lady, and he sometimes showed 
them to Cranstoun, Clerk, and myself — but we real];^ 
thought them in general very poor. Two things of 
the kind, however, have been preserved — and one of 
them was done just after the conclusion of the busi- 
ness." He then took down a volume of the English 



'334 I«IFE OF 8XB WALTEE SCOTT, 

Minstrelsy, and pointed out to me some lines On a 
VwUty which had not at that time heen included in 
Scott's collected works. Lord Kineddcr read them 
over in his usual impressive, though not quite un- 
affected, manner, and said — " I remember well, that 
when I first saw these, I told him they were his best; 
but he had touched them up afterwards." 

" The violet in her greenwood bower, 

Where birchen boughs with haxels mingle, 
May boast itself the £BdreBt flower 
In glen or copse or forest dingle. 

«< Though fair her gems of azure hue 

Beneath the dewdrop*s weight reclining, 
I've seen an eye of lovelier blue 

More sweet through watery lustre shining. 

" The summer sun that dew shall dry, 
Ere yet the sun be past its morrow, 
Nor longer in my false loveV eye 
Remained the tear of parting sorrow!" 

In turning over a volume of MS. papers, I have 
found a copy of verses, which, from the hand, Scott 
had evidently written down within the last ten years 
of his life. They are headed—" To Time — by a 
Lady ;" but certain initials on the back satisfy me, 
that the authoress was no other than the object of his 
first passion.* I think I must be pardoned for trans- 

*A very intimate friend both of Scott and of the lady tells me 



LOVE-AFFAIB. 335 

cribing the lines which had dwelt so long on his 
memory — leaving it to the reader's fancy to picture 
the mood of mind in which the fingers of a grey- 
haired man may have traced such a relic of his youth- 
ful dreams: — 

" Friend of the wretch oppressed with grief, 
Whose lenient hand, diough alow, aupplies 
The balm ihat lends to care relief, 

That wipes her tears — that checks her sighs ! 

" 'Tis thine the wounded soul to heal 

That hopeless bleeds from sorrow's smart, 
From stem misfortune's shaft to steal 
The barb that rankles in the heart. 

" What though with thee the roses fly. 
And jocund youth's gay reign is o'er ; 
Though dimm'd the lustre of ihe eye, 
And hope's vain dreams enchant no more ? 

'* Yet in ihy train come dove-eyed peace, 
Indifference with her heart of snow ; 
At her cold couch, lo I sorrows cease, 
No thorns beneath her roses grow. 

** O haste to grant thy suppliant's prayer. 
To me thy torpid calm impart ; 
Rend from my brow youth's garland fiur. 
But take the thorn that's in my heart. 

that these verses were great favourities of hers •— she gave him- 
self a copy of them, and no doubt her recitation had made them 
known to Scott — but that he believes them to have been com- 
posed by Mrs Hunter of Norwich. — [1839.] 



336 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

** Ah I wlij do fabling poeto tell 

That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind ? 
Why feign diy course of joy the knell. 
And call thy slowest pace unkind? 

** To me thy tedious feeble pace 

Comes laden with the weight of years ; 
With sighs I view morn's blushing face, 
And hail mild evemng with my tears." 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 337 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Publication ofBaUads after Burger ^^ Scott Quar- 
ter - Master of the Edinburgh Light -horse — 
Excursion to Cumberland — CfUsland Wells -r— 
Miss Carpenter' — Marriage. 

1796-1797. 



Rebelling, as usual, against circumstances, Scott 
seems to have turned with, renewed ardour to his 
literary pursuits ; and in that same October, 1796, 
he was ^ prevailed on," as he playfully expresses it, 
" by the request of friends^ to indulge his own 
tranity, by publishing the translation of Lenore, with 
that of the Wild Huntsman, also from Biirger, in 
a thin quarto." The little volume, which has no 
author's name on the title-page, was printed for 
Manners and Miller of Edinburgh. The first named 
of these respectable publishers had been a fellow- 
student in the German class of Dr Willich ; and 

VOL. L Y 



338 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

this circumstance probably suggested the negotiation. 
It was conducted by William Erskine, as appears 
from his postscript to a letter addressed to Scott 
by his sister, who, before it reached its destination, 
had become the wife of Mr Campbell Colquhoun of 
Clathick and Killermont — in after-days Lord Ad- 
vocate of Scotland. This was another of Scott's 
dearest female friends. The humble home which she 
shared with her brother during his early struggles at 
the bar, had been the scene of many of his hc^piest 
hours ; and her letter affords such a pleasing idea of 
the warm aifectionateness of the little circle, that I 
cannot forbear inserting it : — 



« To Walter Scott, Esq^ Rosebank, Kelso. 

" Monday Evening. 

*< If it were not that etiquette and I were con- 
stantly at war, I should think myself very blameable 
in thus trespassing against one of its laws ; but as it 
is long since I forswore its dominion, I have ac- 
quired a prescriptiye right to act as I will — and I 
shall accordingly anticipate the station of a matron 
in addressing a young man. 

" I can express but a very, very little of what I 
feel, and shall ever feel, for your unintermitting 
friendship and attention. I have ever considered 



BALLADS FROM BURGER. 339- 

you as a brother, and shall now think myself entitled 
to make even larger claims on your confidence. Well 
do I remember the dark conference we lately held 
together ! The intention of unfolding my own future 
fate was often at my lips. 

" I cannot tell you my distress at leaving this 
house, wherein I have enjoyed so much real happi-- 
ness, and giving up the service of so gentle a master/ 
whose yoke was indeed easy. I will therefore only 
commend him to your care as the last bequest of 
Mary Anne Erskine, and conjure you to continue to 
each other through all your pilgrimage as you have 
commenced it. May every happiness attend you I 
Adieu ! 

^< Your most sincere friend and sister, 

M. A. E." 

Mr Erskine writes on the other page — " The 
poems are gorgeous, but I have made no bargain 
with any bookseller. I have told M. and M. that I 
won't be satisfied with indemnity, but an offer must 
be made. They will be out before the end of the 
week." On what terms the publication reaUy took 
place, I know not. 

It has already been mentioned, that Scott owed 
his copy of Burger's works to the young lady of 
Harden, whose marriage occurred in the autumn of 
1795. She was daughter of Count Briihl of Mart- 



340 LIFE OF SIS WALTEB SCOTT. 

kirchen, long Saxon ambassador at the Court of St 
James's, by his wife Almeria, Countess-Dowager of 
Egremont. The young kinsman was introduced to 
her soon after her arriyal at Mertoun, and his at- 
tachment to Grerman studies excited her attention 
and interest. Mrs Scott supplied him with many 
standard German books, besides Biirger ; and the gift 
of an Adelung*s dictionary from his old ally, Greorge 
Constable (Jonathan Oldbuck), enabled him to mas- 
ter their contents sufficiently for the purposes of 
translation. The ballad of the Wild Huntsman ap- 
pears to have been executed during the month that 
preceded his first publication; and he was thence- 
forth engaged in a succession of versions from the 
dramas of Meier and Iffland, several of which are 
still extant in his MS., marked 1796 and 1797. 
These are all in prose like their originals; but he 
also versified at the same time some lyrical fragments 
of Goethe, as, for example, the Morlachian Ballad, 

" What yonder glimmers so wliite on the mountain,*' 

and the song from Claudina von Villa Bella. He 
consulted his friend at Mertoun on all these essays ; 
and I have often heard him say, that, among those 
many ^' obligations of a distant date which remained 
impressed on his memory, after a life spent in a 
constant interchange of friendship and kindness," 



MRS SCOTT OF HARDEN. 341 

he counted not as the least, the lady's frankness in 
correcting his Scotticisms, and more especially his 
Scottish rhymes. 

His obligations to this lady were indeed various; 
but I doubt, after all, whether these were the most 
important. He used to say, that she was the first 
woman of real fashion that took him up ; that she 
used the privileges of her sex and station in the 
truest spirit of kindness; set him right as to a 
thousand little trifles, which no one else would have 
ventured to notice ; and, in short, did for him what 
no one but an elegant woman can do for a young 
man, whose early days have been spent in narrow 
and provincial circles. " When I first saw Sir 
Walter," she writes to me, " he was about four or 
five -and -twenty, but looked much younger. He 
seemed bashful and awkward ; but there were from 
the first such gleams of superior sense and spirit in 
his conversation, that I was hardly surprised when, 
after our acquaintance had ripened a little, I felt my- 
self to be talking with a man of genius. He was 
most modest about himself, and showed his little 
pieces apparently without any consciousness that they 
could possess any claim on particular attention. No- 
thing so easy and good-humoured as the way in which 
he received any hints I might oiler, when he seemed 
to be tampering with the King's English. I remem- 
ber particularly how he laughed at himself, when I 



342 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

made him take notice that ^ the little^bwo dogs,' in 
some of his lines, did not please an English ear accus- 
tomed to * the two Kttle dogs.' " 

Nor was this the only person at Mertonn who 
took a lively interest in his pursuits. Harden entered 
into all the feelings of his beautiful bride on this 
subject; and his mother, the Lady Diana Scott, 
daughter of the last Earl of Marchmont, did so no 
less. She had conversed, in her early days, with the 
brightest ornaments of the cycle of Queen Anne, and 
preserved rich stores of anecdote, well calculated to 
gratify the curiosity and excite the ambition of a 
young enthusiast in literature. Lady Diana soon 
appreciated the minstrel of the clan ; and, surviving 
to a remarkable age, she had the satisfaction of seeing 
him at the height of his eminence — the solitary per- 
son who could give the author of Marmion personal 
reminiscences of Pope.* 

On turning to James Ballantyne's Memorandum 
(already quoted), I find an account of Scott's journey 
from Rosebank to Edinburgh, in the November after 
the Ballads from BUrger were published, which gives 
an interesting notion of his literary zeal and opening 
ambition at this remarkable epoch of his life. Mr 

* Mr Scott of Harden*8 right to the peerage of Polwuili, as 
representing, througli liig mother, the line of Marchmont, was 
allowed by the House of Lords in 1835. 



JAMES BALLANTYNE. 343 

Ballantyne had settled in Kelso as a solicitor in 
1795 ; but, not immediately obtaining much pro- 
fessional practice, time hung heavy on his hands, 
and he willingly listened, in the summer of 1796, 
to a proposal of some of the neighbouring nobility 
and gentry respecting the estabhshment of a weekly 
newspaper,* in opposition to one of a democratic 
tendency, then widely circulated in Roxburghshire 
and the other Border counties. He undertook the 
printing and editing of this new journal, and pro- 
ceeded to London, in order to engage correspondents 
and make other necessary preparations. While thus 
for the first time in the metropolis, he happened to 
meet with two authors, whose reputations were then 
in full bloom — namely, Thomas Holcroft and Wil- 
liam Godwin — the former a popular dramatist and 
novelist ; the latter, a novelist of far greater merit, 
but " still more importantly distinguished," says the 
Memorandum before me, '^ by those moral, legal, 
political, and religious heterodoxies, which his talents 
enabled him to present to the world in a very cap- 
tivating manner. His Caleb Williams had then just 
come out, and occupied as much public attention as 
any work has done before or since." '' Both these 
eminent persons," Ballantyne continues, " I saw 
pretty frequently ; and being anxious to hear what* 

• The KeUo Mail. 



344 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

ever I could tell about the literary men in Scotland, 
they both treated me with remarkable freedom of 
communication. They were both disting^hed by 
the clearness of their elocution, and very full of 
triumphant confidence in the truth of their systems. 
They were as willing to speak, therefore, as I could 
be to hear ; and as I put my questions with all the 
fearlessness of a very young man, the result was, 
that I carried away copious and interesting stores 
of thought and information: that the greater part 
of what I heard was full of error, never entered into 
my contemplation. Holcroft at this time was a fine- 
looking, lively man, of green old age, somewhere 
about sixty. Godwin, some twenty years younger, 
was more shy and reserved. As to me, my delight 
and enthusiasm were boundless." 

After returning home, BaUantyne made another 
journey to Glasgow for the purchase of types ; and 
on entering the Kelso coach for this purpose — ** It 
would not be easy," says he, ^< to express my joy on 
finding that Mr Scott was to be one of my partners 
in the carriage, the only other passenger being a fine, 
stout, muscular, old Quaker. A very few miles re- 
established us on our ancient footing. Travelling 
not being half so speedy then as it is now, there was 
plenty of leisure for talk, and Mr Scott was exactly 
what is called the old man. He abounded, as in 
the days of boyhood, in legendary lore, and had now 



BALLADS FROM BtSOEB. 345 

added to the stock, as his recitations showed, many 
of those fine ballads which afterwards composed the 
Minstrelsy. Indeed, I was more delighted with him 
than ever ; and, by way of reprisal, I opened on him 
my London budget, collected from Holcroft and 
Godwin. I doubt if Boswell ever showed himself a 
more skilM Reporter than I did on this occasion. 
Hour after hour passed away, and found my bor- 
rowed eloquence still flowing, and my companion 
still hanging on my lips with unwearied interest. It 
was customary in those days to break the journey 
(only forty miles) by dining on the road, the conse* 
quence of which was, that we both became rather 
oblivious; and after we had re-entered the coach, 
the worthy Quaker felt quite vexed and disconcerted 
with the silence which had succeeded so much con- 
versation. ' I wish,' said he, ' my young friends, 
that you would cheer up, and go on with your plea- 
sant songs and tales as before : they entertained me 
much.' And so," says Ballant3me, '^ it went on 
again until the evening found us in Edinburgh ; and 
from that day, until within a very short time of his 
death — a period of not less than five-and-thirty 
years — I may venture to say that our intercourse 
never flagged." 

The reception of the two ballads had, in the mean 
time, been favourable, in his own circle at least. 
The many inaccuracies and awkwardnesses of rhyme 



346 LIFE OF SUt WALTER SCOTT. 

and diction to which he allndes in repoblishii^ them 
towards the close of his life, did not preYent real 
loTers of poetry from seeing that no one but a poet 
could have transfused the daring imagery of the 
German in a style so free, bold, masculine, and fiill 
of life; but, wearied as all such readers had been 
with that succession of feeble, flimsy, lackadaisical 
trash which followed the appearance of the Reliques 
by Bishop Percy, the opening of such a new vein of 
popular poetry as these verses revealed, would have 
been enough to produce lenient critics for far in- 
ferior translations. Many, as we have seen, sent 
forth copies of the Lenore about the same time; 
and some of these might be thought better than 
Scott's in particular passages ; but, on the whole, it 
seems to have been felt and acknowledged by those 
best entitled to judge, that he deserved the palm. 
Meantime, we must not forget that Scotland had 
lost that very year the great poet Bums, her glory 
and her shame. It is at least to be hoped that a 
general sentiment of self-reproach, as well as of 
sorrow, had been excited by the premature extinc- 
tion of such a light ; and, at all events, it is ag^ree- 
able to know that they who had watched his career 
with the most affectionate concern, were among the 
first to hail the promise of a more fortunate suc- 
cessor. Scott found on his table, when he reached 



i 



BALLADS FBOM BURGER. 347 

Edinburgh, the following letters from two of Bums's 
kindest and wisest friends : — 



" To Walter Scotty Esq. Advocate^ Georges Square. 

" My Dear Sir, 

" I beg you will accept of my best thanks for 
the favour you have done me by sending me four 
copies of your beautiful translations. I shall retain 
two of them, as Mrs Stewart and I both set a high 
value on them as gifts from the author. The other 
two I shall take the earliest opportunity of trans- 
mitting to a friend in England, who, I hope, may be 
instrumental in making their merits more generally 
known at the time of their first appearance. In a 
few weeks, I am fully persuaded they will engage 
public attention to the utmost extent of your wishes, 
without the aid of any recommendation whatever. I 
ever am. Dear Sir, yours most truly, 

DuoALD Stewart.** 

" Canongate, Wednesday Eveumg/* 

« To the Same. 

« Dear Sir, 

" On my return from Cardross, where I had 
been for a week, I found yours of the 14th, which 



348 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

had sorely loitered by the way. I thank yoa most 
cordially for your present. I meet with little poetry 
nowadays that touches my heart; but your transla- 
tions excite mingled emotions of pity and terror, in- 
somuch, that I would not wish any person of weaker 
nerves to read WiUiam and Helen before going to 
bed. Great must be the original, if it equals the 
translation in energy and pathos. One would almost 
suspect you have used as much liberty with Biirger 
as Macpherson was suspected of doing with Ossian. 
It is, however, easier to hackspeir you. Sober reason 
rejects the machinery as unnatural ; it reminds me, 
however, of the magic of Shakspeare. Nothing has 
a finer effect than the repetition of certain words, 
that are echoes to the sense, as much as the celebra- 
ted lines in Homer about the rolling up and falling 
down of the stone: Tramp, tramp ! splashy splash I 
is to me perfectly new; and much of the imagery 
is nature. I should consider this muse of yours (if 
you carry the intrigue far) more likely to steal your 
heart from the law than even a wife. I am, Dear 
Sir, your most obedient, humble servant, 

Jo. Ramsay.** 

" Ochtertyre, SOth Not. 1796." 

Among other literary persons at a distance, I may 
mention George Chalmers, the celebrated antiquary, 
with whom he had been in correspondence from the 



BALLADS FBOM BCRGEB. 349 

beginning of this year, supplying him with Border 
ballads for the illustration of his researches into 
Scotch history. This gentleman had been made ac- 
quainted with Scott's large collections in that way, 
by a common friend, Dr Somerville, minister of 
Jedburgh, author of the History of Queen Anne ;* 
and the numerous MS. copies communicated to him 
in consequence, were recalled in the course of 17999 
when the plan of the *' Minstrelsy '' began to tdke 
shape. Chalmers writes in great transports about 
Scott's versions ; but weightier encouragement came 
from Mr Taylor of Norwich, himself the first tran- 
slator of the Lenore. 

" I need not tell you, sir, " he writes, " with how 
much eagerness I opened your Tolume — with how 
much glow I followed the Chcise — or with how 
much alarm I came to William and Helen. Of the 

* Some extracts from this venerable person's unpublished 
Memoirs of bis own Life, have been kindly sent to me by his son, 
the well-known physician of Chelsea College; from which it 
appears that the reverend doctor, and more particularly still his 
wife, a lady of remarkable talent and humour, had formed a high 
notion of Scott's future eminence at a very early period of his 
life. Dr S. survived to a great old age, preserving his faculties 
quite entire, and I have spent many pleasant hours under his 
hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter Scott. We heard 
him preach an excellent circuit sermon when he was upwards of 
ninety-two, and at the Judges' dinner afterwards he was among 
the gayest of the company. 



350 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

latter I will say nothing ; praise might seem hypo- 
crisy — criticism envy. The ghost nowhere makes 
his appearance so well as with you, or his exit so 
well as with Mr Spenser. I like very much the 
recurrence of 

' The acourge is red, the spur drops blood, 
The flashing pebbles flee ;* 

but of WUliam and Helen I had resolved to say 
nothing. Let me return to the Chasey of which the 
metric stanza style pleases me entirely — yet I think 
a few passages written in too elevated a strain for the 
general spirit of the poem. This age leans too 
much to the Darwin style. Mr Percy's Lenore 
owes its coldness to the adoption of this; and it 
seems peculiarly incongruous in the ballad — where 
habit has taught us to expect simplicity. Among 
the passages too stately and pompous, I should 
reckon — 

* The mountaia echoes startling wake— 
And for. devotion's choral swell 
Exchange the rude discordant noise — 
Fell Famine marlcs the maddening throng 
With cold Despair's averted eye' — 

and perhaps one or two more. In the twenty-first 
stanza, I prefer Burger's trampling the com into 
chaffs and dusty to your more metaphorical, and 



BALLADS FROM BUBGER. 351 

therefore less picturesque, " destructive sweep the 
field along." In the thirtieth, " On whirlwind's 
pinions swiftly borne," to me seems less striking than 
the still disapparition of the tumult and bustle — 
the earth has opened, and he is sinking with his 
evil genius to the nether world — as he approaches, 
dumpf ratischt es me ein ferner meer — it should 
be rendered, therefore, not by " Save what a distant 
torrent gave," but by some sounds which shall ne- 
cessarily excite the idea of being hellsprung — the 
sound of simmering seas of fire — pinings of goblins 
damned — or some analogous noise. The forty- 
seventh stanza is a very great improvement of the 
originaL The profanest blasphemous speeches need 
not have been softened down, as in proportion to the 
impiety of the provocation, increases the poetical 
probability of the final punishment. I should not 
have ventured upon these criticisms, if I did not 
think it required a microscopic eye to make any, and 
if I did not on the whole consider the Chase as a 
most spirited and beautiful translation. I remain (to 
borrow in another sense a concluding phrase from 
the Spectator), your constant admirer, 

W. Taylor, Jun." 

" Norwich, 14th Dec 1796." 

The anticipations of these gentlemen, that Scott's 
versions would attract general attention in the south, 



352 UFB OP SIB WiLLTEB SCOTT. 

were not fulfilled. He himself attributes this to the 
contemporaneous appearance of so many other trans- 
lations from Lenore. " In a word,** he says, " my 
adventure, where so many pushed off to sea, proved 
a dead loss, and a great part of the edition was con- 
demned to the service of the trunkmaker. This 
failure did not operate in any unpleasant degree 
either on my feelings or spirits. I was coldly re- 
ceived by strangers, but my reputation began rather 
to increase among my own Mends, and on the whole 
I was more bent to show the world that il had ne- 
glected something worth notice, than to be affronted 
by its indifference ; or rather, to speak candidly, I 
found pleasure in the literary labours in which I had 
almost by accident become engaged, and laboured 
less in the hope of pleasing others, though certainly 
without despair of doing so, than in a pursuit of a 
new and agreeable amusement to myself."* 

On the 12th of December Scott had the curiosity 
to witness the trial of one James Mackean, a shoe- 
maker, for the murder of Buchanan, a carrier, em- 
ployed to convey money weekly from the Glasgow 
bank to a manufacturing establishment at Lanark. 
Mackean invited the carrier to spend the evening in 
his house; conducted family worship in a style of 
much seeming fervour; and then, while his friend 

* Remarks on Popular Poetry. 1630. 



JAMES MACKEAN. 353 

was occupied, came behind him, and almost severed 
his head from his body by one stroke of a razor. I 
have heard Scott describe the sanctimonious air which 
the murderer maintained during his trial -^ preserv- 
ing throughout the aspect of a devout person, who 
believed himself to have been hurried into his accu- 
mulation of crime by an uncontrollable exertion of 
diabolical influence ; and on his copy of the " Life 
of James Mackean, executed 25th January .1797>" 
I find the following marginal note : — 

" I went to see this wretched man when under 
sentence of death, along with my friend, Mr William 
Clerk, advocate. His great anxiety was to convince 
us that his diabolical murder was committed from 
a sudden impulse of revengeful and violent passion, 
not from deUberate design of plunder. But the con- 
trary was manifest from the accurate preparation of 
the deadly instrument — a razor strongly lashed to an 
iron bolt — and also from the evidence on the trial, 
from which it seems he had invited his victim to 
drink tea with him on the day he perpetrated the 
murder, and that this was a reiterated invitation. 
Mackean was a good-looking elderly man, having a 
thin face and clear grey eye; such a man as may 
be ordinarily seen beside a collection-plate at a se- 
ceding meeting-house, a post which the said Mackean 
had occupied in his day. All Mackean's account of 
the murder is apocryphal. Buchanan was a power- 

YOL. I. z 



354 LIFE OF SIB WALTER 8COTT, 

ful man, and Mackean slender. It appeared that 
the latter had engaged Buchanan in writing, then 
suddenly clapped one hand on his eyes, and struck 
the fatal blow with the other. The throat of the 
deceased was cut through his handkerchief to the- 
back bone of the neck, against which the razor was 
hacked in several places." 

In his pursuit of his German studies, Scott ac- 
quired, about this time, a very important assistant 
in Mr Skene of Rubislaw, in Aberdeenshire — a gen- 
tleman considerably his junior, who had just returned 
to Scotland from a residence of several years in 
Saxony, where he had obtained a thorough know- 
ledge of the language, and accumulated a better cc^- 
lection of German books than any to which Scott 
had, as yet, found access. Shortly after Mr Skene's 
arrival in Edinburgh, Scott requested to be intro- 
duced to him by a mutual friend, Mr Edmonstone 
of Newton ; and their fondness for the same litera- 
ture, with Scott's eagerness to profit by his new 
acquaintance's superior attainment in it, thus opened 
an intercourse which general similarity of tastes, and 
I venture to add, in many of the most important 
features of character, soon ripened into the familiaiitj 
of a tender friendship — " An intimacy," Mr Skene 
says, in a paper before me, *^ of which I shall ever 
think with so much pride — a friendship so pure 
and cordial as to have been able to withstand all 



MR SKENE OF RUBISLAW. 355 

the Ticissitudes of nearly forty years, without ever 
haying sustained even a casual chill from unkind 
thought or word.^ Mr Skene adds — '* During the 
whole progress of his varied life, to that eminent 
station which he could not hut feel he at length 
held in the estimation, not of his countrymen alone, 
but of the whole world, I never could perceive the 
slightest shade of variance from that simplicity of 
character with which he impressed me on the first 
hour of our meeting." 

Among the common tastes which served to knit 
these friends together, was their love of horseman- 
ship, in which, as in all other manly exercises, Skene 
highly excelled ; and the fears of a French invasion 
becoming every day more serious, their thoughts 
were turned with corresponding zeal to the pro-« 
ject of organizing a force of mounted volunteers in 
Scotland. <^ The London Light-horse had set the 
example," says Mr Skene, " but in truth it was to 
Scott's ardour that this force in the North owed its 
origin. Unable, by reason of his lameness, to serve 
amongst his friends on foot, he had nothing for it 
but to rouse the spirit of the moss-trooper, with 
which he readily inspired all who possessed the means 
of substituting the sabre for the musket." 

On the 14th February, 1797> these friends and 
many more met and drew up an offer to serve as a 
hody of volunteer cavalry in Scotland; which offer 



356 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

being transmitted throngh the Duke of Baccleuch» 
Lord -Lieutenant of Mid-Lothian, was accepted by 
Groyemment. The oi^g;anization of the corps pro- 
ceeded rapidly ; they extended their offer to serre in 
any part of the island in case of invasion ; and this 
also being accepted, the whole arrangement was 
shortly completed ; when Charles Maitland of Ran- 
keiUor was elected Major- Commandant; (Sir) William 
Rae of St Catharine's, Captain ; James Gordon of 
Craig, and George Robinson of Qermiston, Lieute- 
nants ; (Sir) William Forbes of Pitsligo, and James 
Skene of Rubislaw, Comets; Walter Scott, Paymaster, 
Quartermaster, and Secretary ; John Adams, Ad- 
jutant. But the treble duties thus devolved on Scott 
were found to interfere too severely with his other 
avocations, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore relieved 
liim soon afterwards from those of paymaster. 

" The part of quartermaster," says Mr Skene, 
<< was purposely selected for him, that he might be 
spared the rough usage of the ranks ; but, notwith- 
standing his infirmity, he had a remarkably firm seat 
on horseback, and in all situations a fearless one : no 
fatigue ever seemed too much for him, and his zeal 
and animation served to sustain the enthusiasm of 
the whole corps, while his ready * mot h, rire' kept 
up, in all, a degree of good-humour and relish for 
the service, without which, the toil and privations of 
long dailif drills would not easily have been subnodtted 



EDINBURGH lilGHT-HORSE. 357 

^ to by such a body of gentlemen. At every interval 

ii 
I 



of exercise, the order, sit at eascy was the signal for 
the quartermaster to lead the squadron to merriment; 
every eye was intuitively turned on * Earl Walter,' 
as he was familiarly called by his associates of thai; 
date, and his ready joke seldom failed to raise the 
ready laugh. He took his full share in all the la- 
bours and duties of the corps, had the highest pride 
in its progress and proficiency, and was such a trooper 
himself, as only a very powerful frame of body and 
the warmest zeal in the cause could have enabled any 
one to be. But his habitual good-humour was the 
g^reat charm, and at the daily mess (for we all dined 
together when in quarters) that reigned supreme." 

JEarl Walter's first charger, by the way, was a tall 
and powerful animal, named Lenore, These daily 
drills appear to have been persisted in during the 
spring and summer of 1797 ; the corps spending 
moreover some weeks in quarters at Musselburgh. 
The majority of the troop having professional duties 
to attend to, the ordinary hour for drill was ^^q in 
the morning ; and when we reflect, that after some 
hours of hard work in this way, Scott had to produce 
hiqiself regularly in the Parliament House with gown 
and wig, for the space of four or five hours at least, 
while his chamber practice, though still humble, was 
on the increase — and that he had found a plentiful 
source of new social engagements in his troop con- 



35 d LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTfT. 

nexions — it certainly could have excited no surprise 
had his literary studies heen found suffering total 
intermission during this busy period. That such was 
not the case, however, his correspondence and note- 
books afford ample evidence. 

He had no turn, at this time of his life, for early 
rising ; so that the regular attendance at the morning 
drills was of itself a strong evidence of his military 
zeal ; but he must have, in spite of them, and of all 
other circumstances, persisted in what was the usual 
custom of aU his earlier life, namely, the devotion of 
the best hours of the night to solitary study. In 
general, both as a young man, and in more advanced 
age, his constitution required a good allowance of 
sleep, and he, on principle, indulged in it, saying, 
'< he was but half a man if he had not full seven 
hours of utter unconsciousness ;'' but his whole mind 
and temperament were, at this period, in a state of 
most fervent exaltation, and spirit triumphed over 
matter. His translation of Steinberg's Otho of Wit- 
telsbach, is marked " 1796-7 ;" from which, I con- 
clude, it was finished in the latter year. The volume 
containing that of Meier's " Wolfred of Dromberg, 
a drama of Chivalry,'' is dated 1797 ; and, I think, 
the reader will presently see cause to suspect, that 
though not alluded to in his imperfect note-book, 
these tasks must have been accomplished in the Tery 
season of the daily drills. 



NOTE-BOOK — 1797. 359 

The letters addressed to him in March, April, and 
June, by Kerr of Abbotrule, George Chalmers, and 
his uncle at Rosebank, indicate his unabated interest 
in the collection of coins and ballads; and I shall 
now make a few extracts from his private note-book, 
some of which will at all events amuse the survivors 
of the Edinburgh Light-Horse : — 

« March 15, 1797 Read Stanfield's trial, and 

the conviction appears very doubtful indeed. Surely 
no one could seriously believe, in 1688, that the body 
of the murdered bleeds at the touch of the murderer, 
and I see little else that directly touches Philip Stan- 
field. He was a very bad character, however ; and 
tradition says, that having insulted Welsh, the wild 
preacher, one day in his early life, the saint called 
from the pulpit that God had revealed to him that 
this blasphemous youth would die in the sight of as 
many as were then assembled. It was believed at the 
time that Lady Stanfield had a hand in the assassina- 
tion, or was at least privy to her son's plans ; but 
I see nothing inconsistent with the old gentleman's 
having committed suicide.* The ordeal of touching 
the corpse was observed in Germany. They call it 
harrechU 

* See particttlars of Staafield's case ia Lord Fountainhairti 
Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs, 1680-1701, edited br 
Sir Walter Scott. 4to, Edinburgh, 1822. Pp. 23^-230. 



360 JLIFE OF SIB WALTSB SCOTT. 

"ilforcA 27 

* The friers of Fail 
Gat never owre hard eggs, or owre thin kale ; 
For they made their eggs thin wi* butter. 
And their kale thick wi' bread. 
And the friers of Fail they made gude kale 
On Fridays when they fasted ; 
They never wanted gear enough 
As lang as their neighbours* lasted.' 

" Fairy-rings. — N,B. Delrius says the same ap- 
pearance occurs wherever the witches have held their 
Sabbath. 

" For the ballad of * WiUie's lady/ compare Apu- 
leius, lib. i. p. 33. • . . 

" April 20. — The portmanteau to contain the 
following articles: — 2 shirts; 1 black handkerchief; 
1 night-cap, woollen; 1 pair pantaloons, blue; 1 
flannel shirt with sleeves; 1 pair flannel drawers; 
1 waistcoat ; 1 pair worsted stockings or socks. 

<< In the slip, in cover of portmanteau, a case with 
shaving-things, combs, and a knife, fork, and spoon ; 
a German pipe and tobacco-bag, flint, and steel; 
pipe-clay and oil, with brush for laying it on ; a shoe- 
brush ; a pair of shoes or hussar-boots ; a horse- 
picker, and other loose articles. 

" Belt with the flap and portmanteau, currycomb, 
brush, and mane-comb, with sponge. 

" Over the portmanteau, the blue overalls, and a 



NOTE-BOOK — 1797* 36 1 

spare jacket for stable ; a small horse-sheet, to cover 
the horse's back with, and a spare girth or two. 

*^ In the cartouche-box, screw-driyer and picker 
for pistol, with three or four spare flints. 

^* The horse - sheet may be conveniently folded 
below the saddle, and will save the back in a long 
march or bad weather. Beside the holster, two fore- 
feet shoes.* 

^ May 22. — Apuleius, lib. ii Anthony- 

a-Wood. Mr Jenkinson's name (now Lord 

Liverpool) being proposed as a difficult one to rhyme 
to, a lady present hit off this verse extempore. — 

* Some of Scott's most intimate friends at ihe Bar, partly, no 
doubt, from entertaining political opinions of another caste, were 
by no means disposed to sympathise with the demonstrations of 
his military enthusiasm at this period. For example, one of these 
gentlemen thus writes to another in April 1 797 : — '* By the way, 
Scott is become the merest trooper that ever was begotten by a 
drunken dragoon on his trull in a hay-loft. Not an idea crosses 
his mind, or a word his lips, that has not an allusion to some 
d— d instrument or evolution of the Cavalry — * Draw your 
swords — by smgle files to the right of front — to the left wheel 
— charge 1' After all, he knows little more about wheels and 
charges than I do about the wheels of Esekiel, or the King of 
Pelew about charges of homing on six days' date. I saw them 
charge on Leith Walk a few days ago, and I can assure you it 
was by no means orderly proceeded. Clerk and I are continually 
obliged to open a six-pounder upon him in self-defence, but in 
spite of a temporary confusion, he soon rallies and returns to the 
attack.*' 



362 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

jVLB. Both father and son (Lord Hawkesbury) have 
a peculiarity of vision : — 

* Happy Mr Jenkinson, 
Happy Mr Jenkinton, 
I'm sure to yoii 
Your lady 'a true. 
For you have got a winking eon.* 

" 23. — Delriua. . . . 

*' 24. — * 1, John Bell of Brackenbrigi lies under diis atane ; 

Four of my sons laid it on my wame. 

I was man of my meat, and master of my wife. 

And lived in mine ain house without meikle strife. 

Gif thou best a better man in thy time than I waa^ia 
mine, 

Tak this stane off my wame, and lay it upon thine.' 

*' 25. — Meric Casaubon on Spirits 

** 86. — ' There saw we learned Maroe's golden tombe ; 

The way he cut an English mile in length 

Thorow a rock of stone in one night's space.* 

" Christopher Marlowe's Tragicall History of Dr 
Faustus — a very remarkable thing. Grand subject 

— end grand Copied < Prophecy of Merlin' 

from Mr Clerk's MS. 

" 27.^ — Read Everybody's Business is Nobody's 
Business, by Andrew Moreton. This was one of 
Defoe's many aliases — like his pen, in parts. .... 

* To Cuthbert, Gar, and Collingwood, to Shafto and to Hall; 
To every gallant generous heart that for King James did fidl.* 

« 28. Anthony-a- Wood Plain Proof 



NOTE-BOOK — 1797. 363 

^f the True Father and Mother of the Pretended 
Prince of Wales, by W. Fuller. This fellow was 
pilloried for a forgery some years later. ..... Began 

Nathan der Weise* 

^^June 29.— ^ Read Introduction to a Compen- 
dium on Brief Examination, by W. S. — yiz. William 
Stafford* — though it was for a time given to no less 
a W. S. tha:n William Shakspeare. A curious trea- 
tise — the Political Economy of the Elizabethan Day 
— worth reprinting. .... 

<< Jidy \. — Read Discourse of Military Discipline, 
by Captain Barry — a very curious account of the 
famous Low Countries armies -^-^ full of military hints 
worth note. ..... Anthony Wood again. 

" 3. — Nathan der Weise. . » » . Delrius. .... 

" 6^^^Geutenberg's Braut begun. 

'' 6.-^The Bride again. Delrius." 

The note-book from which I have been copying ifi 
chiefly filled with extracts from Apuleius and An- 
thony-a-Wood — most of them bearing, in some way, 
on the subject of popular superstitions. It is a pity 
that many leaves have been torn out ; for if unmuti- 
lated, the record would probably have enabled one to 
guess whether he had already planned his '' Essay on 
Fairies." 

I have mentioned his business at the bar as in- 
creasing at the same time. His^^-frooA; is now before 



364 UFE OF SIB WALTSB SCOTT. 

me, and it shows that he made by his first yearns 
practice £24, 38. ; by the second, £57, 15s. ; by the 
third, £84, 4s.; by the fourth, £90; and in his fifth 
year at the bar — that is, from November 1796, to 
July 1797 — £144, 10s.; of which £50 were fees 
from his Other's chamber. 

His friend, Charles Kerr of Abbotrule, had been 
residing a good deal about this time in Cumberland : 
indeed, he was so enraptured with the scenery of the 
lakes, as to take a house in Keswick with the inten- 
tion of spending half of all future years there. His 
letters to Scott (March, April, 1797) abound in ex- 
pressions of wonder that he should continue to devote 
so much of his vacations to the Highlands of Scot- 
land, " with every crag and precipice of which," says 
he, '' I should imagine you would be familiar by this 
time; nay, that the goats themselves might almost 
claim you for an acquaintance ;" while another dis- 
trict lay so near him at least as well qualified ^ to 
give a swell to the fancy." 

After the rising of the Court of Session in July, 
Scott accordingly set out on a tour to the English 
lakes, accompanied by his brother John, and Adam 
Fergusson. Their first stage was Halyards in Tweed- 
dale, then inhabited by his friend's fitther, the philo- 
sopher and historian ; and they staid there for a day 
or two, in the course of which Scott had his first and 
only interview with David Ritchie, the original of 



TOUB TO THE LAKES. 365 

his Black Dwarf.* Proceeding southwards, the 
tourists visited Carlisle, Penrith, — the vale of the 
Eamont, including Mayburgh and Brougham Castle, 
— Ulswater and Windermere; and at length fixed 
their headquarters at the then peaceful and seques- 
tered little watering place of Gilsland, making excur- 
sions from thence to the various scenes of romantic 
interest which are commemorated in The Bridal of 
Triermain, and otherwise leading very much the sort 
of life depicted among the loungers of St Ronan's 
Well. Scott was, on his first arrival in Gilsland, not 
a little engaged with the beauty of one of the young 
ladies lodged under the same roof with him ; and it 
was on occasion of a visit in her company to some 
part of the Roman Wall that he indited his lines — 

** Take these flowers, wluch, purple waving, 
On the ruined rampart grew," &c. f 

But this was only a passing glimpse of flirtation. A 
week or so afterwards commenced a more serious 
af&ir. 

Riding one day with Fergusson, they met, some 
miles from Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on 

* See the Introduction to this Novel in the edition of 1830. 

f I owe this circumstance to the recollection of Mr Gaud 
Russell, accountant in Edinburgh, who was one of the party. 
Previously I had always supposed these verses to have been in- 
spired by Miss Carpenter. 



366 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

horseback, whom neither of them had previously 
remarked, and whose appearance instantly struck 
both so much, that they kept her in view until they 
had satisfied themselyes that she also was one of the 
party at Gilsland^ The same evening there was a 
ball, at which Captain Soott produced himself in his 
regimentals,, and Fergusson also thought proper to 
be equipped in the uniform of the Edinburgh Vo- 
lunteers. There was no little rivalry among the 
young travellers as to who' should first get presented 
to the unknown beauty of the morning's ride ; but 
though both the gentlemen in scarlet had the advan- 
tage of being dancing partners, their friend succeeded 
in handing the fair stranger to supper — and such 
was his first introduction to Charlotte Margaret Car- 
penter. 

Without the features of a regular beauty, she was 
rich in personal attractions ; " a form that was fa- 
shioned as light as a fay's;" a complexion of the 
clearest and lightest olive ; eyes lai^, deep-set and 
dazzling, of the finest Italian brown ; and a profusion 
of silken tresses, black as the raven's wing — her 
address hovering between the reserve of a pretty 
young Englishwoman who has not mingled largely 
in general society, and a certain natural archness 
and gaiety that suited well with the accompaniment 
of a French accent. A lovelier vision, as all who 
remember her in the bloom of her days have assured 



GILSLAND — MISS CAKPENTER. 367 

me, could hardly have been imagined ; and from that 
hour the fate of the young poet was fixed. 

She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of 
Lyons, a devoted royalist, who held an office under 
Government,* and Charlotte Volere, his wife. She 
and her only brother, Charles Charpentier, had been 
educated in the Protestant religion of their mother ; 
and \^en their father died, which occurred in the 
beginning of the Revolution, Madame Charpentier 
made her escape with her children, first to Paris, 
and then to England, where they found a warm 
friend and protector in the late Marquis of Down- 
shire, who had, in the course of his travels in France, 
formed an intimate acquaintance with the family, 
and, indeed, spent some time under their roof. M. 
Charpentier had, in his first alarm as to the coming 
Revolution, invested £4000 in English securities — 
part in a mortgage upon Lord Downshire's estates. 
On the mother^s death, which occurred soon after 
her arrival in London, this nobleman took on him- 
self the character of sole guardian to her children ; 
and Charles Charpentier received in due time, through 
his interest, an appointment in the service of the 
East-India Company, in which he had by this time 

* In several deeds which I have seen, M. Charpentier is de- 
signed " Ecuyer du Koi ; ** one of those purchaseahle ranks 
peculiar to the latter stages of the old French Monarchy. What 
the post he held was, I never heard. 



368 LIFE OF Snt WALTER SCOTT. 

risen to the lacrative situation of commercial resi* 
dent at Salem. His sister was now making a little 
excursion, under the care of the lady who had su- 
perintended her education, Miss Jane Nicolson, a 
daug^hter of Dr Nicholson, Dean of Exeter, and 
grand-daughter of WiHiam Nidiolson, Bishop of 
Carlisle, well known as the editor of *^ The English 
Historical Library." To some connexions which 
the learned prelate's fiftmily had ever since his time 
kept up in the diocese of Carlisle, Miss Carpenter 
owed the direction of her summer tour. 

Scott's father was now in a very feeble state of 
health, which accounts for his first announcement of 
this afiair being made in a letter to his mother ; it 
is undated ; — but by this time the young lady had 
left Gilsland for Carlisle, where she remained until 
her destiny was settled. 



" To Mrs Scott, Georgis Square, Edinburgh. 

« My Dear Mother, 

** I should very ill deserve the care and aflfec- 
tion with which you have ever regarded me, were I 
to neglect my duty so far as to omit consulting my 
&ther and you in the most important step which I 
can possibly take in life, and upon the success of 
which my future happiness must depend. It is with 



MISS CABPENTEK. 369 

pleasure I think that I can avail myself of your 
advice and instructions in an afiair of so great im- 
portance as that which I have at present on my 
hands. You will prohahly guess from this preamble, 
that I am engaged in a matrimonial plan, which is 
really the case* Though my acquaintance with the 
young lady has not been of long standing, this cir- 
cumstance is in some degree counterbalanced by the 
intimacy in which we have lived, and by the oppor*^ 
tunities which that intimacy has afforded me of 
remarking her conduct and sentiments on many 
different occasions, some of which were rather of 
a delicate nature, so that in fact I have seen more 
of her during the few weeks we have been together, 
than I could have done after a much longer ac- 
quaintance, shackled by the common forms of ordi- 
nary life. You will not expect from me a description 
of her person — for which I refer you to my brother, 
as also for a fuller account of all the circumstanced 
attending the business than can be comprised in the 
compass of a letter. Without flying into raptures, 
for I must assure you that my judgment as well 
as my affections are consulted upon this occasion — 
without flying into raptures, then, I may safely as- 
sure you, that her temper is sweet and cheerful, her 
understanding good, and, what I know will give you 
pleasure, her principles of religion very serious. I 
)iave been very explicit with her upon the nature 
VOL. I. A a 



370 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

of my expectations, and she thinks she can accom- 
modate herself to the situation which I should wish 
her to hold in society as my wife, which, you will 
easily comprehend, I mean should neither, he extra- 
vagant nor degprading. Her fortune, though partly 
dependent upon her brother, who is high in office 
at Madras, is yery considerable — at present £500 
a-year. This, however, we must, in some degree^ 
regard as precarious — I mean to the full extent ; 
and indeed, when you know her, you will not W 
surprised that I regard this circumstance chiefly 
because it removes those prudential consideratioiis 
which would otherwise render our union impossible 
for the present. Betwixt her income and my own 
professional exertions, I have little doubt we will be 
enabled to hold the rank in society which my family 
and situation entitle me to fill. 

" My dear mother, I cannot express to you the 
anxiety I have that you will not think me flighty 
nor inconsiderate in this business. Believe me, that 
experience, in one instance — you cannot fail to 
know to what I allude — is too recent to permit 
my being so hasty in my conclusions as the wannth 
of my temper might have otherwise prompted. I 
am also most anxious that you should be prepared 
to show her kindness, which I know the goodness of 
your own heart will prompt, more especially when I 
tell you that she is an orphan, without relations, and 



MISS CARPENTER. 371 

almost without friends. Her guardian is — I should 
say wasy for she is of age, Lord Downshire, to whom 
I must write for his consent, a piece of respect to 
which he is entitled for his care of her, — and there 
the matter rests at present. I think I need not tell 
you that if I assume the new character which I 
threaten, I shall he happy to find that in that capa- 
city I may make myself more useful to my brothers, 
and especially to Anne, than I could in any other. 
On the other hand, I shall certainly expect that my 
friepds will endeavour to show every attention in 
their power to a woman who forsakes for me pro- 
spects much more splendid than what I can offer, and 
who comes into Scotland without a single friend but 
myself. I find I could write a great deal more upon 
this subject, but as it is late, and as I must write to 
my father, I shall restrain myself. I think (but you 
are best judge) that in the circumstances in which 
I stand, you should write to her. Miss Carpenter, 
under cover to me at Carlisle. 

" Write to me very fully upon this important 
subject — send me your opinion, your advice, and 
above all, your blessing ; you will see the necessity 
of not delaying a minute in doing so, and in keeping 
this business strictly private^ till you hear farther 
from me, since you are not ignorant that even at 
this advanced period, an objection on the part of 
Lord Downshire, or many other accidents, may in- 



372 LIFE OF SIR WALTEK SCOTT. 

1 

terrene ; in which case, I should little wish my dis- 
appointment to he puhlic. 

<< Belieye me, mj Dear Mother, 

^ Erer your dutiful and affectionate son, 

Walter Scott." 

Scott remained in Cumherland until the Jedbur^ 
assizes recalled him to his legal duties. On arriYing^ 
in that totm, he immediately sent for his friend 
Shortreed, whose memorandum records that the 
evening of the 30th September 1797 was one of the 
most joyous he ever spent. '^ Scott,** he says, *' was 
sair beside himself about Miss Carpenter; — we 
toasted her twenty times over — and sat together, 
he raving about her, until it was one in the mor- 
ning." He soon returned to Cumberland ; and the 
following letters will throw light on the character 
and conduct of the parties, and on the nature of 
the difficulties which were presented by the prudence 
and prejudices of the young advocate's family con- 
nexions. It appears, that at one stage of the busi- 
ness, Scott had seriously contemplated leaving the 
bar at Edinburgh, and establishing himself with his 
bride (I know not in what capacity) in one of the 
tolonies. 



MISS CARPENTER. 373 



" To Waltei* Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh. . 

" Carlisle, October 4, 1797. 

'^ It is only an hour since I received Lord Down- 
shire's letter. You will say, I hope, that I am 
indeed very good to write so soon, hut 1 almost fear 
that all my goodness can never carry me through all 
this plaguy writing. Lord Downshire will he happy 
to hear from you. He is the very hest man on 
earth — his letter is kind and affectionate, and full 
of advice, much in the style of i/our last* I am to 
consult most carefully my heart. Do you believe I 
did not do it when I gave you my consent ? It is 
true, I don't like to reflect on that subject. I am 
afraid. It is very awful to think it is for life. How 
can I ever laugh after such tremendous thoughts ? 
I believe never more. I am hurt to find that your 
friends don't think the match a prudent one. If it 
is not agreeable to them all, you must then forget 
me, for I have too much pride to think of connect- 
ing myself in a family were I not equal to them. 
Pray, my dear sir, write to Lord D. immediately — 
explain yourself to him as you would to me, and he 
will, I am sure, do all he can to serve us. If you 
really love me, you must love him, and write to him 
as you would to a friend. 

" Adieu, — au plaisir de vous revoir bientot. 

c, e." 



374 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



" To Robert Shortreed, Esq^ Sheriff-substitute^ 
Jedburgh, 

« Selkirk, 6di October 1797. 
« Dear Bob, 

<^ This day a long train of anxieties was put aa 
end to by a letter from Lord Downshire, couched in 
the most flattering terms, giving his consent to my 
marriage with his ward. I am thus &r on my way 
to Carlisle — only for a visit — because, betwixt her 
reluctance to an immediate marriage, and the immi- 
nent approach of the session, I am afraid I shall be 
thrown back to the Christmas holidays. I shall be 
home in about eight days. 

" Ever yours, sincerely, 

W. Scott.'* 



" To Miss Christian Ruthe^fordy Ashestiei^ 
by Selkirk. 

<< Has it never happened to you, my dear Miss 
Christy, in the course of your domestic economy, to 
meet with a drawer stuffed so very, so extremehf 
full, that it was very difficult to pull it open, how« 
ever desirous you might be to exhibit its contents ? 
In case this miraculous event has ever taken place. 






MISS CARPENTER. 375 

you may somewhat conceive from thence the cause 
of my silence, which has really proceeded from my 
haying a yery great deal to communicate ; so much 
so, that I really hardly know how to hegin. As 
for my affection and friendship for you, believe me 
sincerely, they neither slumber nor sleep, and it is 
only your suspicions of their drowsiness which in- 
cline me to write at this period of a business highly 
interesting to me, rather than when .1 could have 
done so with something like certainty — Hem ! 
Hem ! It must come out at once — I am in a very 
fair way of being married to a very amiable young 
woman, with whom I formed an attachment in the 
course of my tour. She was bom in France — her 
parents were of English extraction — the name Car- 
penter. She was left an orphan early in life, and 
educated in England, and is at present under the 
care of a Miss Nicolson, a daughter of the late Dean 
of Exeter, who was on a visit to her relations in 
Cumberland. Miss Carpenter is of age, but as she 
lies under great obligations to the Marquis of Down- 
shire, who was her guardian, she cannot take a step 
of such importance without his consent — and I 
daily expect his final answer upon the subject. Her 
fortune is dependent, in a great measure, upon an 
only and very affectionate brother. He is Commer- 
cial Resident at Salem in India, and has settled upon 
her an annuity of £500. Of her personal accom- 



376 LIFE OF SIB WALTES SCOTT. 

ptishments I shall only say, that she possesses Tery 
good sense, with nncommon good temper, which I 
have seen put to most severe trials. I must he- 
speak your kindness and friendship for her. Yoa 
may easily beUeve I shall rest very much hoth upon 
Miss R. and you for giving her the carte de pays, 
when she comes to Edinburgh. I may give you a 
hint that there is no romavice in her composition — 
and that though bom in France, she has the senti- 
ments and manners of an Englishwoman, and does 
not like to be thought otherwise. A very slight 
tinge in her pronunciation is all which marks the 
foreigner. She is at present at Carlisle, where I 
shall join her as soon as our arrangements are finally 
made. Some difficulties have occurred in settling 
matters with my father, owing to certain prepos- 
sesions which you can easily conceive his adopting. 
One main article was the imcertainty of her provi- 
sion, which has been in part removed by the safe 
arrival of her remittances for this year, with as- 
surances of their being regular and even larger in 
future, her brother's situation being extremely lu- 
crative. Another objection was her birth : ** Can 
any good thing come out of Nazareth?" but as it 
was Urth merely and solely^ this has been aban- 
doned. You will be more interested about other 
points regarding her, and I can only say that — 
though our acquaintance was shorter than ever I 



MISS CARPENTER. 377 

could ha^e thought of forming such a connexion 
upon-:- it was exceedingly close, and gave me full 
opportunities for obserration — and if I had parted 
with her, it must have been for ever, which both 
parties began to think would be a disagreeable thing. 
She has conducted herself through the whole bud* 
ness with so much propriety as to make a strong 
impression in her favour upon the minds of my 
&ther and mother, prejudiced as they were against 
her, from the circumstances I have mentioned. We 
shall be your neighbours in the New Town, and 
intend to live very quietly; Charlotte will need 
many lessons from Miss R. in housewifery. Pray 
show this letter to Miss R. with my yery best com- 
pliments. Nothing can now stand in the way except 
Lord Downshire, who may not think the match a 
prudent one for Miss C. ; but he wiU surely think 
her entitled to judge for herself at her age, in what 
she would wish to place her happiness. She is not 
a beauty, by any means, but her person and face 
are very engaging. She is a brunette — her man- 
ners are lively, but when necessary, she can be very 
serious. She was baptized and educated a Protes- 
tant of the Church of England. I think I have now 
said enough upon this subject. Do not write till 
you hear from me again, which will be when all is 
settled. I wish this important event may hasten 
your return to town. I send a goblin story, with 



378 UIX OF SIR WAI.TXK SCOTT. 

best compliments to the misses, snd erer am, yours 
A^fectiomitdj, WAI.TSR Scott.* 

" The Ekl-Kivg.* 

/'Tke ErUKing U a gMin thmi kanmU the Black Fartat in, 
T%mnmgia.'-'To he read hjf a eandU partiadarly lomg im 
the muff.) 

O, w^ rides by niglit tibro* tlie woodland to wild? 
It is tha fond faiShn embracing his cbild; 
And dose the boy nestles within his loved ann. 
To hold himself fut, and to keep himself warm. 

' O father, see yonder ! see yonder ! ' he says ; 
' My boy, upon what doest thou fearfully gaze ?'— 

* O, 'tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud.* — 

* No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud.* 

( The ErUKing tpeakt,) 
' O, come and go wiUi me, thou loveliest child ; 
By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled ; 
My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy, 
And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy.* 

* O, father, my father, and did you not hear 
The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear? ' 

' Be still,' my heart's darling — my child, be at ease; 
It was but the wild blast as it sung ihro' the trees.* 

EtUKing, 

* O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy ? 

My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy ; 
She shall bear thee so lightly thro' wet and thro* wild. 
And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child.* 

* From the German of Goethe. 



MISS CABPE19TER. 379 

* O father, my fatlier, and aaw you not plain. 

The Erl- King's pale daughter glide past thro' the rain?' — 

* O yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon ; 
It was the grey willow that danced to the moon.' 

BrUKing. 
' Oh come and go with me, no longer delay. 
Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away.'—- 
' Oh father I Oh father I now, now keep your hold. 
The Erl-King has seized me — his grasp is so cold!' 

Sore trembled the &ther ; he spurr'd thro' the wild, 
Clasping close to hu bosom his shuddering child ; 
He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread. 
But, dasp'd to his bosom, the infant was deadf " 

'< You see I have not altogether lost the faculty 
of rhyming. I assure you, there is no small impu- 
dence in attempting a yersion of that hallad, as it has 
been translated by Lewis. — All good things be 
with you. W. S." 



^' To Wialtet' Scott^ Esq^ Advocate, Edinburgh. 

*< London, October 15, 1797. 
"Sir, 

" I receiyed your letter with pleasure, instead 
of considering it as an intrusion. One thing more 
being fully stated, would haye made it perfectly satis- 



380 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

factory, namely, the sort of income you immediatelj 
possess, and the sort oi maintenance Miss Carpenter, 
in case of yoor demise, might reasonably expect 
Though she is of an age to judge for herself in the 
choice of an object that she would like to ran the 
race of life with, she has referred the subject to me. 
As her friend and goardian, I in duty must try to 
secure her happiness, by endeayouring to keep her 
comfortable immediately, and to prevent her being 
left destitute, in case of any unhappy contingency. 
Her good sense and good education are her chief 
fortune; therefore, in the worldly way of talking, 
she is not entitled to much. Her brother, who was 
also left under my care at an early period, is exces- 
sively fond of her ; he has no person to think of but 
her as yet; and will certainly be enabled to make 
her very handsome presents, as he is doing very well 
in India, where I sent him some years ago, and 
where he bears a very high character, I am happy to 
say. I do not throw out this to induce you to make 
any proposal beyond what prudence and discretion 
recommend ; but I hope I shall hear from you by re- 
turn of post, as I may be shortly called out of town 
to some distance. As children are in general the 
consequence of an happy union, I should wish to 
know what may be your thoughts or wishes upon 
that subject. I trust you will not think me too par- 
ticular; indeed I am sure you will not, when, you 



MISS CARPENTER. 381 

consider that I am endeayouring to secure the happi- 
ness and welfare of an estimable young woman whom 
you admire and profess to be partial and attached to, 
and for whom I have the highest regard, esteem, and 
respect. 

^ I am, Sir, your obedient humble servant, 

DOWNSHIRE." 

« To the Same. 

" Carlisle, Oct. 22. 
" Your last letter, my dear sir, contains a very 
fine train of perhaps, and of so many pretty conjec- 
tures, that it is not flattering you to say you excel in 
the art of tormenting yourself. As it happens, you 
are quite wrong in all your suppositions. I have 
been waiting for Lord D.'s answer to your letter, to 
give a full answer to your very proper enquiries 
about my fenuly. Miss Nicolson says, that when she 
did offer to give you some information, you refused 
it — and advises me now to wait for Lord D.'s letter. 
Don't believe I have been idle ; I have been writing 
very long letters to him, and all about you. How 
can you think that I will give an answer about the 
house until I hear from London ? — that is quite im- 
possible ; and I believe you are a little out of your 
senses to imagine I can be in Edinburgh before 
the twelfth of next month. O. my dear sir, no — 



382 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

you must not think of it this great while. I am 
much flattered by your mother's remembrance ; pre- 
sent my respectful compliments to her. You don't 
mention your father in your last anjnous letter — I 
hope he is better. I am expecting every day to hear 
from my brother. You may tell your uncle he is 
commercial resident at Salem. He will find the 
name of Charles C. in his India list. My compli- 
ments to Captain Scott. Sans ctdieu^ 

C. C." 

" To the Same, 

«* Carlisle, Oct 26. 
*< Indeed, Mr Scott, I am by no means pleased 
with all this writing. I have told you how much I 
dislike it, and yet you still persist in asking me to 
write, and that by return of post. O, you really are 
quite out of your senses. I should not have ia- 
dulged you in that whim of yours, had you not given 
me that hint that my silence gives an au* of mystery. 
I have no reason that can detain me in acquainting- 
you that my father and mother were French of the 
name of Charpentier ; he had a place under govern- 
ment ; thw residence was at Lyons, where you would 
find on enquiries that they lived in good repute and 
in very good style. I had the misfortune of losing 
my father before I could know the value of such a 



MISS CABPENTER. 383 

parent. At his death we were left to the care of 
Lord D., who was his very great friend ; and very 
soon after I had the affliction of -losing my mother. 
Our taking the name of Carpenter was on my bro- 
ther's going to India, to prevent any little difficul- 
ties that might have occurred. I hope now you are 
pleased. Lord D. could have given you every infor- 
mation, as he has been acquainted with all my family. 
You say you almost love him ;, but until your almost 
comes to a qvite^ I cannot love ifou. Before I con- 
clude this famous epistle, I will give you a little hint 
— that is, not to put so many must in your letters 
-—it is beginning rather too soon; and another 
thing is, that I take the liberty not to mind them 
much, but I expect you mind me. You miist take 
care of yourself; you must think of me, and believe 
me yours sincerely, C. C." 



« To the Same. 

" Carlisle, Oct 26. 

'^ I have only a minute before the post goes, to 

assure you, -my dear sir, of the welcome reception of 

the stranger.* The very great likeness to a friend 

of mine will endear him to me ; he shall be my con* 

* A miniature of Scott. 



3d4 LITE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

stant compamoD, but I wish he could give me an 
answer to a thousand questions I hare to make — 
one in particular, what reason have you for so many 
fears jou express? Have your friends changed? 
Pray let me know the truth — they peihaps don't 
like me heitig French^ Do write immediately — let 
It be in better spirits. £t croyez-moi toujours votre 
sincere C C" 

' << To the Same. 

" October Slst. 

" . 4 . i All youi" apprehensions about youi* friends 
make me rery uneasy. At your fether's age, preju- 
dices are not easily overcome — old people have, you 
know, so much more wisdom and experience, that 
we must be guided by them. If he has an objection 
on my being French^ I excuse him with all my 
heart, as I don't love them myself. O how all these 
things plague me! — tvhen will it end? And to 
complete the matter, you talk of going to the West 
Indies. I am certain your father and uncle say you 
are a hot heady young man, quite mad, and I assure 
you I join with them; and I must believe, that 
when you have such an idea, you have then deter- 
mined to think no more of me. I begin to repent of 
having accepted your picture. I wiU send it hiMck 
agaifiy if you ever think again about the West Indies. 



M188 CARPENTER. 385 

4 

Your family then would love me very much — to 
forsake them for a stranger, a person who does not 
possess half the charms and good qualities that you 
imagine. I think I hear your uncle calling you a 
hot heady young man. I am certain of it, and I am 
generally right in my conjectures. What does your 
sister say about it ? I suspect that she thinks on the 
matter as I should do, with fears and anxieties for 
the happiness of her brother. If it be proper, and 
you think it would be acceptahley present my best 
compliments to your mother; and to my old ac- 
quaintance Captain Scott I beg to be remembered. 
This evening is the first ball — don't you wish to 
be of our party ? I guess your answer — r it would 
g^ve me infinite pleasure. En attendant le plaisir de 
Tous revoir, je suis toujours votre constante 

Charlotte.* 

« To the Same. 

** The Castle, Hartford, October 29, 1 797. 
« Sir, 

*' I received the favour of your letter. It was so 
manly, honourable, candid, and so full of good sense, 
that I think Miss Carpenter's friends cannot in any 
way object to the union you propose. Its taking 
place, when or where, will depend upon herself, as I 

VOL. 1. B b 



386 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

shall write to her by this night's post Any provi- 
sion that may he given to her by her brother, you 
will have settled upon her and her children; and I 
hope, with aU my heart, that every earthly happiness 
may attend you both. I shall be always happy to 
hear it, and to subscribe myself your faithful friend 
and obedient humble servant, 

DOWNSHIRE." 



{On the same sheet) 

" Carlisle, Nov. 4. 

^ Last night I received the enclosed for you from 
Lord Downshire. If it has your approbation, I shall 
be very glad to see you as soon as will be convenient. 
I have a thousand things to tell you ; but let me beg 
of you not to think for some time of a house. I am 
sure I can convince you of the propriety and pru> 
dence of waiting until your father will settle things 
more to your satisfttction, and until I have heard 
from my brother. You mtut be of my way of think- 
ing. — Adieu. C. C* 

Scott obeyed this summons, and I suppose re- 
mained in Carlisle until the Court of Session met, 
which is always on the 12th of November. 



MISS CARFENTEB. 387 

" To W. Scott, Esq^ Advocate, Edinburgh, 

" Carlisle, Nov. J 4th. 
" Your letter never could have come in a more 
favourable moment. Any thing you could have said 
would have been well received. You surprise me 
much at the regret you express you had of leaving 
Carlisle. Indeed, I can't believe it was on my ac- 
count, I was so uncommonly stupid. I don't know 
what could be the matter with me, I was so very 
low, and felt really ill: it was even a trouble to 
speak. The settling of our little plans — all looked 
so much in earnest — that I began reflecting more 
seriously than I generally do, or approve of. I don't 
think that very thoughtful people ever can be happy. 
As this is my maxim, adieu to all thoughts. I have 
made a determination of being pleased with every 
thing, and with every body in Edinburgh; a wise 
system for happiness, is it not ? I enclose the lock. 
I have had almost all my hair cut off. Miss Nicol- 
son has taken some, which she sends to London to 
be made to something, but this you are not to know 
of, as she intends to present it to you. ****** 
I am happy to hear of your father's being better 
pleased as to money matters ; it will come at last ; don't 
let that trifle disturb you. Adieu, Monsieur. J'ai 
I'honneur d'etre votre tres humble et tres 

« Obeissante C. C." 



/•>^ 



388 • LIFE OF 81R WALTER SCOTT. 



« Carlisle, Nov. 27th. 
" Yon have made me very triste all day. Pray 
never more complain of being poor. Are you not 
ten times richer than I am ? Depend on yourself 
and your profession. I have no doubt you will rise 
very high, and be a great rich maity but we should 
look down to be contented with our lot, and banish 
all disagreeable thoughts. We shall do very well. 
I am very sorry to hear you have such a had head. 
I hope I shall nurse away all your aches. I think 
you write too much. When. I am mistress I shall 
not allow it. How very angry I should be with 
you if you were to part with Lenore. Do you really 
believe I should think it an unnecessary expense 
where your health and pleasure can be concerned ? I 
have a better opinion of you, and I am very glad you 
don't give up the cavalry, as I love any thing that is 
stylish. Don't forget to find a stand for the oM car- 
riage, as I shall like to keep it, in case we should 
have to go any journey ; it is so much more conve- 
nient than the post chaises, and will do very well till 
we can keep our carriage. What an idea of yours 
was that to mention where you wish to have your 
bones laid ! If you were married, I should think 
you were tired of me. A very pretty compliment 
before marriage. I hope sincerely that I shall not 
Uve to see that day. If you always have those 



MISS CARPENTER. 389 

cheerfol thoughts, how very pleasant and gay you 
must be. 

" Adieu, my dearest friend. Take care of yourself 
if you love me, as I have no wish that you should 
visit that beautiful and romantic scene, the burying- 
place. Adieu, once more, and believe that you are 
loved very sincerely by C. C." 

" Dec. lOth. 
" If I could but really believe that my letter gave 
you only half the pleasure you express, I should 
almost think, my dearest Scott, that I should get 
very fond of writing merely for the pleasure to tw- 
dulge you — that is saying a great deal. I hope you 
are sensible of the compliment I pay you, and don't 
expect I shall always be so pretty behaved. You 
may depend on me, my dearest friend, for fixing as 
early a day as I possibly can ; and if it happens to 
be not quite so soon as you wish, you must not be 
angry with me. It is very unlucky you are such a 
bad housekeeper — as I am no better. I shall try. 
I hope to have very soon the pleasure of seeing you, 
and to tell you how much I love you ; but I wish 
the first fortnight was over. With all my love, and 
those sort of pretty things — adieu. 

Charlotte." 

" P. S. Etudiez voire Fran^ais. Remember you 



390 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

are to teach me Italian in return, but I shall be but a 
stupid scholar. Aimez Charlotte!* 



" Carlisle, Dec. 14th. 
******"! heard last night from my friends 
in London, and I shall certainly hare the deed this 
week. I will send it to you directly ; but not to lose 
so much time, as you have been reckoning, I will 
prevent any little delay that might happen by the 
post, by fixing already next Wednesday for your 
coming here, and on Thursday the 21st, Oh, my 
dear Scott, — on that day I shall be yours for ever. 

C. C." 

" P,S, — Arrange it so that we shall see none 
of your family the night of our arriyal. I shall be 
so tired, and such a fright, I should not be seen to 
advantage." 

To these extracts I may add the following from 
the first leaf of an old black-letter Bible at Abbots- 
ford : — 

" Secundum morem majorum Jujbc de fafnUid 
GucUteri Scott, JurisconstUti JBdinensiSy in lihTutn 
hunc sacrum m^nu sua conscripta sunt. 



MARRIAGE DECEMBER 1797. 391 

" Gualterus Scott yjilius Gualteri Scott et Anna 
Rutherford^ natus erat apud Edinam 15mo die 
Angusti, A. D. 1771. 

" SodiLS Facultatis Juridicce Edinensis receptus 
&t*at 11 mo 4^e Julii^ A. d. 1792. 

" In ecclesiam Sanctce Ma/rice apud Carlisle, 
uxorem duxit Ma/rgaretam Charlottam Carpenter, 
JUiam quondam Joannis Charpentier et Charlottce 
Volere, Lugdunensem, 24to die. Decemhris 1797." 



END OF VOL. T. 



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